Mathematics will drive you insane, and here's some proof. Some interesting tidbits on a few famous (and crazy) mathemeticians....
[h2]Alexandre Grothendieck[/h2]
[/p]Although he lives in hiding and communicates only via occasional, thousands-of-pages-long letters to colleagues, [a href="vny!://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Grothendieck"]Alexandre Grothendieck[/a] [wiki] is widely considered one of the most important mathematicians of the 20th century. A radical environmentalist and Communist, Grothendieck has, since the 1980s, communicated his mathematical concepts primarily in very long, handwritten letters that circulate among mathematicians. The 1,600-page [em]Long Walk Through Galois Theory[/em], for instance, doesn't strike us as a very compelling beach read, but Grothendieck's colleagues have been poring over it for 25 years.[/p]
[h2]Oliver Heaviside[/h2]
[/p]In his 30s, British engineer and mathematician [a href="vny!://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside"]Oliver Heaviside[/a] [wiki] (1950 - 1925) made important discoveries in [a href="vny!://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace_transform"]how to transform[/a] [wiki] [a href="vny!://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_equations"]differential equations[/a] [wiki] into relatively simple algebra, a discovery that had a profound impact on the lives of advanced calculus students and absolutely no one else. In the last decades of his life, Heaviside's lifelong eccentricity morphed into madness. He started painting his fingernails pink - which while perfectly acceptable now was weird in the 1920s - and he moved all the furniture out of his house, replacing everything with granite blocks of varying sizes.[/p]
[/p] [h2]Walter Petryshyn[/h2]
[/p]Shortly after the publication of his book on nonlinear functions in 1996, Ukrainian-American mathematician Walter Petryshyn discovered the book contained an error. Terrified that he would be the laughing stock of the nonlinear function community, he went mad - in both senses of the word. His depression and paranoia culminated with the murder of his wife. All of which just goes to prove what we told our parents when they saw our grades in calculus: Chill out, man. It's just [em]math[/em].[/p]
