Yes, Virginia, there is a Bourbaki
In 1947, a young graduate student named Virginia O’Hanlon was nervous. Some of her dearly-held beliefs had been called into question, and she was confused. Her advisor suggested she write a letter to the editor of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, and I’m proud to reprint their response here, sixty years after its original publication.
Dear Editor: I am a first-year graduate student.
Some of my fellow students say there is no Bourbaki.
My advisor says, “If you see it in Notices it’s so.”
Please tell me the truth; is there a Bourbaki?Virginia O’Hanlon
115 West HallVirginia, your fellow students are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not provable by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be professors’ or students’, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Bourbaki. He exists as certainly as truth and rigor and structure exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Bourbaki. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no studentlike faith then, no porisms, no discursions to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which studenthood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Bourbaki! You might as well not believe in undergraduates! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the presses on publication day to catch Bourbaki, but even if they did not see Bourbaki submitting his manuscripts what would that prove? Nobody sees Bourbaki, but that is no sign that there is no Bourbaki. The most real things in the world are those that neither students nor professors can see. Did you ever see undergraduates in the library stacks? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the smartest professor, nor even the united smarts of all the smartest professors that ever taught, could tear apart. Only truth, rigor, discourse, intuition, imagination, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Bourbaki! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of studenthood.
