Jean-Pierre Serre turns 100

I'm reading and liking his book just called "Trees" (some bites), it is about group actions on trees, written in the '80. It talks about the modular group among others, the tree action also being used in Shai Haran work on the "real" prime (if the AIs let us dream the old way about classic problems). Serre et al graph of groups idea is very categorical. He could well have been present in the very seminars when Grothendiek was breweing what is now called the Grothendiek construction (absurdly, since G was a serial constructor). That wraps that graph of groups thing.

The European Mathematical Society just published an interview with Serre on the occasion of his birthday: https://euromathsoc.org/news/ems-magazine-no.-141:-celebrati...

> I did not like, and did not understand, epsilons and deltas.

It's nice to have this perspective validated by someone like Serre! I felt like I was missing something when I first encountered that formalism. In fact, all of my introductory calculus classes sucked and turned me off of math for a few years.

Happy birthday “Tonton Serre”

I like this site of Mathematicians' biographies with some occasional quoted segments for extra flavor.

I also like how Serre wrote a book on linear representations of symmetry groups, because his wife needed a good exposition of the subject for her work on quantum chemistry, and that Serre described that as "fullfiling his duty as a husband" :-P