Former Bourbaki school member Laurent Schwartz once stated in his autobiography: "Bourbaki's work has been completed, and completed well... but as a group, there is not much reason for it to continue existing."
Former Bourbaki school member Henri Cartan stated in an interview: "What Bourbaki needed to do has been done. Bourbaki will not live forever."
Former Bourbaki school member Pierre Samuel likewise stated: "In my impression, there will never again be the enthusiasm of the group's early days. Whatever they can do now no longer feels so fresh. I think Bourbaki ought to disband."
And Grothendieck, the former leader of the Bourbaki school and its pope who commanded half the realm, delivered a piercing summary in his autobiography.
"It was precisely in the 1960s that the tone of the Bourbaki school quietly began to turn into ever more pronounced elitism. I too was part of that transformation. I still remember how, in 1970, I was astonished to discover just how unpopular the Bourbaki school was among the lower strata of the mathematical world. The name 'Bourbaki' had, more or less, become synonymous with elitism, absolute dogmatism, a faction fond of 'doctrinalism' at the cost of sacrificing living tolerance and righteousness, alchemical secret arts, and castrated anti-naturalness. And that was not all... That group with its own character no longer existed. I do not know when it died, because it truly did die; no one noticed its death, and no one mourned it—not even in the hearts of its core members.
I suppose the members all decayed without realizing it—everyone inevitably grew more 'advanced in years,' and inevitably became less sensitive. They became important, famous, powerful, intimidating, and widely fawned over. Perhaps they remained just as gifted, but the innocence they had carried along the way was lost... and so