Overview

Nicolas Bourbaki is the pen name of a group of mathematicians, most of them French, who have undertaken the writing of a definitive treatise of modern mathematics. The Bourbaki volumes emphasize the highest degree of mathematical rigor and the structures common to different areas of mathematics. The group perpetuates itself by continually electing new members and requiring that current members must leave the group at age 50.

Background

Nicolas Bourbaki is the invention of two French mathematicians, Claude Chevalley (1909-1984) and André Weil (1906-1998), who decided to write a more modern calculus text for French-speaking students than the ones that were typically used. The choice of the Bourbaki name may have had its origin in a student prank. At some time in the 1930s, students at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris were invited to a lecture by a...