Alexander Grothendieck was born in Berlin on 28 March 1928. His father, Sascha Shapiro, an anarchist originally from Russia, took an active part in the revolutionary movements first in Russia, and then in Germany, during the 1920s, where he met Hanka Grothendieck, Alexander’s mother. After the Nazis came to power in Germany it was too dangerous for a Jewish revolutionary to stay there, and the ...