Bourbaki

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A pen name used by a group of French mathematicians who wrote rigorous textbooks ; a French general who commanded armies in the Franco-Prussian War ; describing a highly formal, axiomatic approach to mathematics
2. The collective pseudonym adopted by a circle of French mathematicians ; the surname of a nineteenth-century French army commander ; relating to an abstract, rigorously structured style of mathematical writing
3. An invented name behind which a group of French mathematicians published their work ; a French general of the 1870 war ; characterizing mathematics built strictly from axioms and formal proof

Etymology: Bourbaki is the collective pen name of a group of mostly French mathematicians who, from the 1930s onward, set out to rewrite all of mathematics on a rigorous, axiomatic footing. The name was borrowed from Charles Denis Bourbaki, a French general of the 1870s who had led an army in the Franco-Prussian War. The group's founders were students at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris who, as the story goes, were playing a prank on a professor, and they chose the name partly for its comic ring. The pseudonym stuck, and the group's multi-volume treatise, "Éléments de mathématique," was published under it beginning in 1939. The members rotated over the decades, and the collective never revealed a fixed roster in its early years, so the name became a kind of institution in its own right. Its books became notorious for their dense, abstract style, and their influence on the teaching of mathematics was substantial. The adjective "Bourbakist" and the noun "Bourbakism" are used to describe that austere, structure-first approach to the subject.