I plan to be doing some work on Weil this summer. I discussed these
letters briefly in a book a few years ago, but did not provide a full
translation. I do not believe an English translation currently exists.
If you can wait for a fwe months I can probably provide a translation.
Otherwise I 'd be happy to help out. They are very beautiful and in
certain
ways quite astonishing pieces of prose.
David Reed
On Sun, 25 Apr 1999, Jim Propp wrote:
> Has anyone translated into English any of the letters Andre Weil sent
> from Rouen to his sister Simone in 1940, describing his mathematics?
>
> Two such letters (one quoted in its entirety and one excerpted) appear
> in the original French in Weil's Collected Papers (volume I, pages 244-255).
> My French is not so fluent, so before I dive in with dictionary in hand
> I thought I'd ask whether anyone knows of an existing English translation.
>
> I tried using Altavista to see if perchance the text exists on-line in
> either French or English; amusingly, the search for "Weil Rouen 1940"
> turned up the home-page of an artist named Mandeville who was born in
> Rouen, had his first shows during the period 1939-1941, and whose first
> post-World War II exhibition was held in 1958 at the "Galerie Andre Weil"
> in Paris.
>
> Jim Propp
> Department of Mathematics
> University of Wisconsin
>
>
>