The continuing silence of Bourbaki. -- An interview with Pierre Cartier, June 18, 1997 (Q1272418)

French mathematician Pierre Cartier (born 1932) belonged to the ``third generation'' of members of Bourbaki which was, according to Cartier ``less and less dogmatic since we did not have to prove anything'', after French mathematics bad been remodeled in the 1950s due to the overwhelming influence of Bourbaki. Cartier compares the prevailing ideology of Bourbaki in the two first generations to other manifestations of the ``Zeitgeist'', i.e., dogmatic ideology in the 20th century such as in art or politics when ``it was in the people's minds that we could reach a final solution''. The ``continuing silence of Bourbaki'', in particular the fact that the French group of mathematicians has not published anything as a collective for fifteen years, Cartier attributes partly to legal battles with a publisher, partly to the invasion of new styles into mathematics such as the one which was brought to the West by Russian mathematicians.