Esquisse D'un Programme - Brief History

Brief History

Submitted in 1984, the Esquisse d'un Programme was a successful proposal submitted by Alexander Grothendieck for a position at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, which Grothendieck held from 1984 till 1988. This proposal was however not formally published until 1997, because the author "could not be found, much less his permission requested". The outlines of dessins d'enfants, or "children's drawings", and "Anabelian geometry", that are contained in this manuscript continue to inspire research; thus, " Anabelian geometry is a proposed theory in mathematics, describing the way the algebraic fundamental group G of an algebraic variety V, or some related geometric object, determines how V can be mapped into another geometric object W, under the assumption that G is not an abelian group, in the sense of being strongly noncommutative. The word anabelian (an alpha privative an- before abelian) was introduced in Esquisse d'un Programme. While the work of Grothendieck was for many years unpublished, and unavailable through the traditional formal scholarly channels, the formulation and predictions of the proposed theory received much attention, and some alterations, at the hands of a number of mathematicians. Those who have researched in this area have obtained some expected and related results, and in the 21st century the beginnings of such a theory started to be available."