Grothendieck’s papers on-line!

Today, the University of Montpellier will put on-line the series of 18,000 pages of manuscripts of Alexandre Groethendieck that it had digitised a few years ago. Thanks to the efforts of Jean-Michel Marin, the nearly incomprehensible legal imbroglio on the rights of both the University and the children of Groethendieck has been unravelled, meaning that the University is now allowed to make the manuscripts available, while the children have the sole property of the dozens of thousands of pages written by Groethendieck till his death. It is hard to imagine how such a volume can be efficiently explored and exploited to uncover new mathematical advances made by Groethendieck in the last and secluded part of his life, but at last the raw material is available for all to try.