FOM: Re: MAndelbrojt and Bourbaki

[Adrian Mathias]

I agree. 

There is an interesting attack on the Royal Society by Clifford 
Truesdell III, in an essay called "The Establishment Stifles Genius". 
The tarter version is in his collection "An Idiot's Fugitive Essays", 
published by Springer. 

In the peroration of that essay he says that the trouble is, in England 
and in Europe generally, that things are too centralised, and therefore 
a small group at the centre has excessive power to crush outsiders. 
He appears to say "It couldn't happen in America".  Well, could it ? 

[I have more to say on this theme, but it will have to wait till next
month]

Adrian Mathias