Plenty of people have worked just as hard as Grothendieck and not gone nuts.  It just makes a more interesting story when they do, and recieves a disproportionate amount of attention.  Besides, Grothendieck's reasons for stopping were (at the time) quite clearly the war machine, and not the "spiritual exhaustion" he began citing only much later.


"A Genius?! For 37 years I've practiced 14 hours a day, and now they call me a genius??" -- Pablo de Sarasate