Nicolas Bourbaki was influential. He was also unusual, given that he didn’t exist. The reality behind the name, and the impact of ‘his’ work is the subject of this volume from Amir D Aczel, the maths writer best known for the book on Fermat’s Last Theorem that wasn’t by Simon Singh.

Bourbaki was the pseudonym of a group of young mathematicians, mostly French, who published a remarkable series of textbooks between the 1930s and 1960s. Their aim was to rebuild mathematics from the ground up, removing the slack thinking that they saw suffocating teaching in schools. The gestalt identity was intended to avoid possible claims about intellectual property, but also to shield the participants from direct criticism from their academic superiors.