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by Jean A. Dieudonne
Year of Award: 1971
Publication Information: The American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 77, 1970, pp. 134-145
Summary: Dieudonné describes some of the philosophy and the workings behind the Bourbaki volumes.
About the Article: (from The American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 77, (1970)). It is believed by some that the original Bourbaki member were C. Chevalley, J. Delsarte, J. Dieudonné, and A. Weil. Apparently the name “Nicolaus Bourbaki” was that of a 19th century French general. It was part of an “initiation” of first year mathematics students that an upper classman, pretending to be a famous foreign mathematician, would deliver a lecture to them in which the theorems bore the names of famous generals were all wrong in a nontrivial way.