Ed Frenkel has a stirring tribute to "visionary" Alexander Grothendieck in the NY Times today, hitting on some of the highlights of the reclusive mathematician's life, and ending as follows:
"A party of one, he was unafraid to be himself and to speak his truth. The man who had advanced mathematics in the most profound ways did not believe that math was the answer to everything. He taught us that life is more valuable than any equation."And at MathTango yesterday I (aided by Keith Devlin) considered the nature of "proof":
http://mathtango.blogspot.com/2014/11/proofiness.html
BTW, I'll probably be posting a 2014 book wrap-up for the popular math volumes of the year sometime after Thanksgiving. It's pretty much already written, but if you have volumes you're partial to for people's Holiday lists, feel free to mention them in the comments here, or in the later post to come.
And for my own interest, curious if anyone is directly familiar with the book "Gödel's Mistake" by Ashish Dalela? If so, do you recommend it, or, not so much (for an interested layreader, not academic logician)?
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