Bourbaki Reconsidered: Origins, Operations, and Legacies

Eighty years ago, in 1939, a radical collective of French mathematicians published the first installment of a monumental effort to rewrite the foundations of mathematics under the pseudonym Nicolas Bourbaki. The Elements de Mathematique, collectively planned, written, and revised, quickly became an icon for a highly influential approach to modern abstract mathematics that found currency and controversy in fields as varied as elementary education, anthropology, art, literature, philosophy, physics, and economics. Bourbaki's collective animators cultivated an atmosphere of mystery and misdirection around their creation, and only a small fraction of the voluminous writing about their project has managed to probe beyond its considerable mythology. Our roundtable discussion brings together several of the scholars who, in the last three decades, have applied detailed historical investigation to forge new understandings of Bourbaki's origins, operations, and legacies. We will discuss recent archival findings and interpretations that significantly revise the prevailing lore about Bourbaki, explaining the project's origins and collective practices in its interwar French contexts, specifying the social and epistemic effects of the group's approach to parody and hoax, and tracing the collaboration's later cultural significance in and beyond France. Our discussion will focus on how historical understandings of Bourbaki have changed, what methodologies and sources have made these changes possible, and what major questions animate current and future scholarship on one of the most famous names of twentieth-century mathematics.