The Parisian origins of the Nicolas Bourbaki group | Tangente

The celebrated group of mathematicians, whose members included Henri Cartan, André Weil and Jean Dieudonné, came together in the mid-1930s to bring mathematics teaching into line with the new approaches that had emerged in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

These renowned mathematicians met on December 10, 1934, at the Café Capoulade, on the sidelines of a talk by Jean Delsarte at the Julia seminar, held in the newly built Institut Henri-Poincaré in the very heart of the Latin Quarter. They decided to join forces and write, under a pseudonym, a rigorous treatise on analysis for students.

The project would take shape in Auvergne in July 1935, at a conference in Besse (now Besse-et-Saint-Anastaise, in Puy-de-Dôme). More broadly, this legendary group gave us a new perspective on mathematics as a whole.

The town hall of the 5^th arrondissement had the welcome idea of installing a plaque—though it is difficult to spot…—on August 30 last year to commemorate this first meeting. It stands at 63 Boulevard Saint-Michel, where the now-vanished café once stood.