Archive-name: sci-math-faq/bourbaki
Last-modified: February 20, 1998
Version: 7.5

   
                              Who is N. Bourbaki?


                                       
   A group of mostly French mathematicians which began meeting in the
   1930s, aiming to write a thorough unified account of all mathematics.
   They had tremendous influence on the way math is done since. For a
   very accessible sampler see Dieudonne Mathematics: The Music Of Reason
   (Orig. Pour L'honneur De L'esprit Humain).
   
   The founding is described in Andre Weil's autobiography, titled
   something like ``memoir of an apprenticeship" (orig. Souvenirs
   D'apprentissage). There is a usable book Bourbaki by J. Fang. Liliane
   Beaulieu has a book forthcoming, which you can sample in ``A Parisian
   Cafe and Ten Proto-Bourbaki Meetings 1934-1935" in the Mathematical
   Intelligencer 15 no.1 (1993) 27-35.
   
   The history behind Bourbaki is also described in Scientific American,
   May 1957.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   
-- 
Alex Lopez-Ortiz                                         alopez-o@unb.ca
http://www.cs.unb.ca/~alopez-o                       Assistant Professor	
Faculty of Computer Science                  University of New Brunswick

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