"He liked putting different pieces of mathematics together: geometry, analysis, topology… so automorphic forms should have appealed to him. But for some reason he didn’t get interested in that at the time. I think the junction between Grothendieck and Langlands was realized only in 1972 at Antwerp. Serre had given a course on Weil’s theorem in 1967–1968. But after 1968 Grothendieck had other interests. And before 1967 things were not ripe. I’m not sure."