Year of Award: 1971

Publication Information: The American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 77, 1970, pp. 134-145

Summary:

Read the Article: 

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. Dieudonne, and A. Weil. Apparently the name “Nicolaus Bourbaki” was that of a 19^th 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.