In the mid-20th century the encyclopedic works of French mathematician Nicolas Bourbaki traced every mathematical concept back to the subject’s foundations in the theory of sets–the stuff of Venn diagrams–and changed the face of his field. Like many of his notions, Bourbaki existed only in the abstract: he was the pseudonym for a tight-knit group of young Parisian researchers. The Internet-age version could be D.H.J. Polymath, another collective pseudonym who could define a new style of mathematics. [More]
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