Page "Alexander Grothendieck" Paragraph 15

Grothendieck's political views were radical and pacifist.

Thus he strongly opposed both United States aggression in Vietnam and Soviet military expansionism.

He gave lectures on category theory in the forests surrounding Hanoi while the city was being bombed, to protest against the Vietnam War ( The Life and Work of Alexander Grothendieck, American Mathematical Monthly, vol.

113, no.

9, footnote 6 ).

He retired from scientific life around 1970, after having discovered the partly military funding of IHÉS ( see pp. xii and xiii of SGA1, Springer Lecture Notes 224 ).

He returned to academia a few years later as a professor at the University of Montpellier, where he stayed until his retirement in 1988.

His criticisms of the scientific community, and especially of several mathematics circles, are also contained in a letter, written in 1988, in which he states the reasons for his refusal of the Crafoord Prize.

He declined the prize on ethical grounds in an open letter to the media.