Comme Appele du Neant, As If Summoned from the Void: The Life of Alexandre Grothendieck

Allyn Jackson's Comme Appele du Neant, As If Summoned from the Void, published in two parts in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society in 2004, is a detailed biographical profile of the mathematician Alexandre Grothendieck. Its strength is that Jackson is a professional mathematics journalist and the Notices is the flagship publication of the American Mathematical Society, giving the profile a high editorial standard for accuracy about Grothendieck's life and mathematical work. Its limit, worth naming precisely, is that part two introduces the well-known Grothendieck prime anecdote without identifying who supposedly asked Grothendieck to name a prime, and quotes David Mumford only commenting on the story, not as its source, so a claim attributing the anecdote's origin to a named individual goes beyond what this article itself establishes.