I agree that the title was intriguing and although I am not fluent in mathematics at the level discussed in the article, I found the biographical sections very interesting and the writing style to be engaging.
Particularly interesting were the comparisons with Boltzmann and Cantor, apparently also "tortured" or at least socially eccentric, geniuses. My understanding of their work is limited but the author of this article seemed to allude to the risks of, or at least correlations with, psychological instability and research at the extreme frontiers of mathematics. (I know this notion is a tired cliche, but still...)
If anyone out there has an understanding of how Grothendieck "deepened the concept of a geometric point" and feels the urge to explain it in layman terms, I have an upvote for you!
Particularly interesting were the comparisons with Boltzmann and Cantor, apparently also "tortured" or at least socially eccentric, geniuses. My understanding of their work is limited but the author of this article seemed to allude to the risks of, or at least correlations with, psychological instability and research at the extreme frontiers of mathematics. (I know this notion is a tired cliche, but still...)
If anyone out there has an understanding of how Grothendieck "deepened the concept of a geometric point" and feels the urge to explain it in layman terms, I have an upvote for you!