Bourbaki, Nicolas

Nicolas Bourbaki, pseudonym chosen by eight or nine young mathematicians in France in the mid 1930s to represent the essence of a “contemporary mathematician.” The surname, selected in jest, was that of a French general who fought in the Franco-German War (1870–71). The mathematicians who collectively wrote under the Bourbaki pseudonym at one time studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and were admirers of the German mathematician David Hilbert. The founders included the Frenchmen Claude Chevalley, André Weil, Henri Cartan, and Jean Dieudonné; after World War II they were joined by the Polish American Samuel Eilenberg. Members agreed to retire from the group at age 50, but the group’s ranks were replenished with new recruits.

The group’s purpose was originally to write a rigorous textbook in analysis, but it grew to include presentations of many branches of algebra and analysis, including topology, from an axiomatic point of view. The Bourbaki writings commenced in 1939 with the first volume of their Éléments de mathématique (“Elements of Mathematics”). The still-incomplete series of more than 30 monographs soon became a standard reference on the fundamental aspects of modern mathematics. The various historical notes included at the ends of chapters were published as a collection in 1960 in Eléments d’histoire des mathématiques (“History of the Elements of Mathematics”).