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Alexander Grothendieck's life and work is full of the wonders.

As far as I know Grothendieck largely decreased his mathematical activity after 1970 and became retired in 1988. However there are rumors about his private works and unpublished papers after 1970. Also there are strange rumors about some of his papers with pseudonymous names mainly between 1970-88 and even after it. For the first time I have heard about this in a free discussion in a model theory and algebraic geometry conference.

Question: Is it really true? Does Grothendieck have any pseudonymous paper? If yes, please introduce some references.

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    Not voting to close because I am too curious. :P – darij grinberg May 06 '14 at 02:02
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    His unpublished papers up to 1991 are reasonably well-known and were available at grothendieck-circle.org until early 2010. Later work is apparently of a more philosophical flavor. – S. Carnahan May 06 '14 at 02:44
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    You may want to take a look at this text. Thanks for letting me know of you catch other typos. – Pierre-Yves Gaillard May 06 '14 at 04:05
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    There is an ongoing project lead by F. Orgogozo to complete the retyping of SGA 4 done originally by Lazslo. Perhaps you would be interested in contacting him. – Leo Alonso May 06 '14 at 08:07
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    Like every rumor, this one may be anywhere from entirely true to entirely false. Probably your best chance to find an answer is to track down its origin, recontacting the people from whom you heard it first, and asking what they know and from whom, and continuing this way inductively. Do you know if those papers were supposed to be mathematical or philosophical? if some of them were published (under a name different from Grothendieck)? – Joël May 06 '14 at 12:41
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    Dear Konrad: A detail: I wonder if it wouldn't be more correct to write "pseudonyms" instead of "anonymous names". – Pierre-Yves Gaillard May 08 '14 at 14:55
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    @Pierre-YvesGaillard Thanks for your guidance. I edited the post. I am not a native speaker in English. Please feel free to improve my posts if you think it needs some sort of syntactical edits. –  May 08 '14 at 15:12
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    Dear Konrad: Welcome! I'm sure your English at least as good as mine. In French (my mother tongue), the words corresponding to anonymous and pseudonym are anonyme and pseudonyme. It helped... – Pierre-Yves Gaillard May 08 '14 at 15:32
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    @Pierre-YvesGaillard Thank you very much Pierre. I wonder if it is possible to have a multi language MathOverflow as same as Wikipedia. e.g. Some top posts in the history of site could be translated to French, German, etc., by users. This increases the domain of audiences who are not native English speakers. –  May 08 '14 at 16:03
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    Vague and sensationalsit. I really hope this question will stay closed. To be reopened it would need at least some editing to address questions raised in commebts what exactly is asked for. –  May 08 '14 at 20:11
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    cf. http://meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/1683/what-about-the-question-does-grothendieck-have-any-pseudonymous-paper for why this question has been closed and if whether should be reopened. – Joël May 08 '14 at 20:48
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    @quid: it is certainly sensationalist, but in what way is it vague? The criterion for answers seems quite clear: publicly available work that does not carry Grothendieck's name, but which there's some reason to believe that Grothendieck may have written. – Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine May 09 '14 at 09:53
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    @PeterLeFanuLumsdaine there is a meta thread please use it if you want a reply. –  May 09 '14 at 10:03
  • From what I've read, Grothendieck retired from mathematics because he felt that his work and the work of his colleagues was being used as much for bad (to win wars, crack codes, spy on citizens etc.) as for good. If that is true, then it seems unlikely that he has been publishing "in secret." – goblin GONE May 09 '14 at 12:51
  • @user18921 One may change his philosophy in his life. For example one may change his opinion to: Almost all branches of science (e.g. mathematics, physics, biology, economics, etc., could be used as much for bad as for good. What we should be against on is "bad uses" of science not "science" itself. It seems hard for a brain to be "retired" of mathematics when it commenced mathematical thinking as a daily habit.Naturally mathematical thinking leads to mathematical production and publication and which way do you choose when you declared you are retired and you want to publish in maths? –  May 09 '14 at 14:19
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    This soft question is completely related: Pseudonyms of Famous Mathematicians –  May 09 '14 at 14:28
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    I put in the last vote to close because I think that any reasonable answers to this questions would make sense as answers to "Pseudonyms of Famous Mathematicians". But I didn't quite feel like going through the trouble of voting for it being a duplicate... – Andy Putman May 09 '14 at 14:41
  • @Konrad oh I fully agree with the bold section of your comment. Furthermore, I'm not criticizing the question, and I'm not saying its impossible for Grothendieck to have had a change of heart. I do, however, deem this unlikely. – goblin GONE May 09 '14 at 14:49
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    Dear Konrad, I share your interest in Grothendieck's writings, and I would be very interested if some new text written by Grothendieck surfaced. On the other hand, Grothendieck has written, after he left the IHES in 1970, dozens of text amounting to much more than 10,000 pages. I did not read all of them. Did you ? I have read Récoltes et Semailles more or less fully, but just a few pages of La clé des songes, and nothing on "Notes sur la clé des songes". I would like to read "Eloge de l'inceste", which is perhaps lost, and apparently Grothendieck's only work of fiction... – Joël May 09 '14 at 18:53
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    The point is that I don't believe much (if any) of the people who has voted up this question have read all of Grothendieck's text. So if any new text of him surfaced, it would sure be a scoop, and everyone likes a scoop, but it would not be something quenching a deep thirst of Grothendieck' writing (as would be, on the contrary, the discovery of a full new play by Sophocles, say). That, I think, is what makes people say this question is "sensationalist". – Joël May 09 '14 at 18:58

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