The case of André Bloch (Q1101428)

The article elucidates the enigmatic biography of André Bloch (1894- 1948), who, after one year of study at the École Polytechnique and an officer's career in World War I interrupted by severe injury, killed his younger brother as well as an uncle and an aunt during a family meal, and was then interned for the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital. While living calmly here, he trained himself as a mathematician, eventually came to publish many important papers, and maintained correspondences with many important mathematicians, including the first author of the present article. On the basis of published and unpublished sources, including a book, written by the former medical head of Bloch's hospital and referring anonymously to Bloch, the authors are able to throw light on this enigmatic biography. It turns out that Bloch was, at least toward the end of his life, convinced that he was obliged by the ``absolute rationality'' of mathematical logic, as embodied by the ``celebrated mathematician from Alexandria, Hypatia'', to exterminate the branch of his family where mental illness had occurred. A page excerpted from a letter from Bloch to the first author gives the same impression of a kind and polite man disdaining those (especially those mathematicians) who do not understand the compulsion of the ``orthodox way of thinking'' belonging to mathematics.