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I became a mathematician out of sheer curiosity, because I couldn’t understand how it was humanly possible to understand mathematics.

My research was at the interface of algebra, geometry, and topology. My favorite objects were braid groups and my biggest achievement was to prove that finite complex reflection arrangements are 𝐾(𝜋,1), settling a conjecture from the 1970s whose real case had been addressed by Deligne.

A course I taught for philosophy students at the École Normale Supérieure, plus my reading of Grothendieck’s Récoltes et Semailles, led to a drastic shift in my perspective on mathematics.

Soon after, I left my permanent research-only academic position with the intention to write a popular book on the human experience of doing mathematics. This took a decade longer than expected as I ran out of money, fell in love with deep learning and founded an AI startup (now exited).

My book has now appeared. It is available in English, French, Japanese, Italian, Turkish, and Russian, with Greek, Chinese, Ukrainian and Korean translations on the way.

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