Re: sga 5/Bas' SGA-project (fwd)
From: Frank Calegari 
 To: 
 Cc: , William A Stein 
 Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 12:12:46 -0800 (PST)
 
> I've been asked to write an article for the Dutch Mathematical
> Society on Bas' SGA-project. I was just wondering why SGA 5 wasn't
> scanned and put on the web with the other ones? It looks like it was
> last printed in 1977, so I don't really see the difference with the
> other ones...
>
> Thanks,
> Reinie.

Dear Reinie,

Let me tell you about the ancient origins of this project.
In 1997, I was an undergraduate student at the University
of Melbourne, Australia, before I came to Berkeley as a
graduate student. There were no number theorists there, and
I was somewhat isolated, but I did have (unlimited) access to a
photocopier machine. I photocopied many articles, but the
one big project I did was photocopy SGA. It took roughly
a week of continuous copying, more or less.

The absence of SGA 5 is due to the fact that the local library
_didn't_have_a_copy! An identical reason prevented me
from copying EGA.

I came to Berkeley, and SGA followed in three boxes
(1-sided, enlarged, for future copying purposes;
I'm sure it would have taken for ever to scan directly
from a book). From time to time other graduate students
would borrow an Expose, instead of an entire volume from
the library. Eventually I guess William and Jim decided to
take the next step and scan in all my photocopies, which
still doesn't include SGA 5, for historical reasons.

I also believe that SGA 7, Expose IX was missed in the
scanning process, since I was using it at the time.
That may have been corrected by now, however.

Cheers,

Frank Calegari.