Birthday of André Weil (1906)

André Weil was a founding member of Bourbaki — the anonymous collective that rewrote all of mathematics from scratch in rigorous, modern language between 1935 and 1998. He proved the Riemann hypothesis for curves over finite fields and conjectured generalisations that Deligne proved in 1974. Weil's work connected number theory and algebraic geometry in ways still being explored. During World War II he was imprisoned in Rouen for refusing military service — and later said prison was the most productive period of his mathematical life.