Birthday of Alexander Grothendieck (1928)

Considered by many the greatest mathematician of the 20th century. Grothendieck revolutionised algebraic geometry by introducing schemes — abstract objects that unified and vastly generalised classical geometry. He worked at a level of abstraction so extreme that colleagues initially struggled to follow him, but his frameworks were so powerful that they reshaped multiple fields simultaneously. He wrote over 20,000 pages of mathematics. At 42, he abruptly abandoned mathematics, gave away his savings, and eventually lived as a hermit in the French Pyrenees. He refused the Crafoord Prize, the most prestigious award in his field.