"In 1979 he disappeared into the Pyrenees with only a post office box as a link to the world. In 1993 he discontinued his post office box. As mentioned before around the year 2000 two young French mathematicians found him at a small town where he came to buy supplies. He talked with them. Others who have communicated with him say he is obsessed with the Devil whom he sees as being behind the turmoil of the world. Grothendieck wrote a document of a hundred pages during this time in which he describes a small group of individuals whom he calls mutants who represent the best in the human race. In 2005 another mathematician tried to locate Grothendieck and was unsuccessful. His was a meteoric career, shiny brightly for a brief time and then also like a meteor extinguished somewhere in the wilderness."


[link to www.applet-magic.com]


Ossie bloke linked me to this brilliant mathematician,
Alexander Grothendieck.
I like the sound of him, eccentrics draw me in if they are intelligent -
and he was absolutely right, the devil is behind the turmoil in the world.