Alexander GrothendieckAlexander Grothendieck (ˈgroʊtəndiːk; ˌalɛˈksandɐ ˈɡʁoːtn̩ˌdiːk; ɡʁɔtɛndik; 28 March 1928 – 13 November 2014) was a French mathematician who became the leading figure in the creation of modern algebraic geometry. His research extended the scope of the field and added elements of commutative algebra, homological algebra, sheaf theory, and to its foundations, while his so-called "relative" perspective led to revolutionary advances in many areas of pure mathematics. He is considered by many to be the greatest mathematician of the twentieth century.
Grothendieck categoryIn mathematics, a Grothendieck category is a certain kind of , introduced in Alexander Grothendieck's Tôhoku paper of 1957 in order to develop the machinery of homological algebra for modules and for sheaves in a unified manner. The theory of these categories was further developed in Pierre Gabriel's seminal thesis in 1962. To every algebraic variety one can associate a Grothendieck category , consisting of the quasi-coherent sheaves on .
Grothendieck topologyIn , a branch of mathematics, a Grothendieck topology is a structure on a category C that makes the objects of C act like the open sets of a topological space. A category together with a choice of Grothendieck topology is called a site. Grothendieck topologies axiomatize the notion of an open cover. Using the notion of covering provided by a Grothendieck topology, it becomes possible to define sheaves on a category and their cohomology. This was first done in algebraic geometry and algebraic number theory by Alexander Grothendieck to define the étale cohomology of a scheme.
