The Mathematical Pranksters Behind Nicolas Bourbaki
daily.jstor.org
daily.jstor.org
I’ve been playing with the idea of picking up Bourbaki’s books and working through them in order.
The goal is to learn math for its own sake - I don’t have any ambitions of turning into a mathematician in the future.
Is this a good idea? If anyone has done something similar, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
They are great for reference if you already know the subject, but if you want to learn something, you'd be better off using introductory textbooks for the various fields you're interested in. I'm happy to make recommendations, and you can also look up syllabi for math undergrad at Stanford, Princeton, etc.
(On a more serious note, I have been wondering if his Éléments de mathématique have aged well and whether or not the treatise is more of historical interest to the mathematicians and students of mathematics today.)