G. H. Hardy Quotes About Science

Quotes about: Science

• I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to discover or observe it, and that the theorems which we prove, and which we describe grandiloquently as our "creations," are simply the notes of our observations.

  G. H. Hardy

  Lying, Believe, Science

  G. H. Hardy (1992). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.123, Cambridge University Press

• No mathematician should ever allow him to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game. ... Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who have done great work later; ... [but] I do not know of a single instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty. ... A mathematician may still be competent enough at sixty, but it is useless to expect him to have original ideas.

  G. H. Hardy

  Art, Science, Past

• If intellectual curiosity, professional pride, and ambition are the dominant incentives to research, then assuredly no one has a fairer chance of gratifying them than a mathematician.

  G. H. Hardy

  Ambition, Pride, Science

  G. H. Hardy, C. P. Snow (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.80, Cambridge University Press

• I count Maxwell and Einstein, Eddington and Dirac, among "real" mathematicians. The great modern achievements of applied mathematics have been in relativity and quantum mechanics, and these subjects are at present at any rate, almost as "useless" as the theory of numbers.

  G. H. Hardy

  Real, Science, Numbers

• Mathematics may, like poetry or music, "promote and sustain a lofty habit of mind."

  G. H. Hardy

  Science, Mind, May

  G. H. Hardy, C. P. Snow (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.116, Cambridge University Press

• If a man is in any sense a real mathematician, then it is a hundred to one that his mathematics will be far better than anything else he can do, and that he would be silly if he surrendered any decent opportunity of exercising his one talent in order to do undistinguished work in other fields. Such a sacrifice could be justified only by economic necessity of age.

  G. H. Hardy

  Real, Silly, Sacrifice

  "A Mathematician's Apology".

• The Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations have perished; Hammurabi, Sargon and Nebuchadnezzar are empty names; yet Babylonian mathematics is still interesting, and the Babylonian scale of 60 is still used in Astronomy.

  G. H. Hardy

  Science, Civilization, Names

• When the world is mad, a mathematician may find in mathematics an incomparable anodyne. For mathematics is, of all the arts and sciences, the most austere and the most remote, and a mathematician should be of all men the one who can most easily take refuge where, as Bertrand Russell says, "one at least of our nobler impulses can best escape from the dreary exile of the actual world."

  G. H. Hardy

  Art, Science, Men

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.143, Cambridge University Press

• It is hardly possible to maintain seriously that the evil done by science is not altogether outweighed by the good. For example, if ten million lives were lost in every war, the net effect of science would still have been to increase the average length of life.

  G. H. Hardy

  War, Science, Average

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.152, Cambridge University Press

• The primes are the raw material out of which we have to build arithmetic, and Euclid's theorem assures us that we have plenty of material for the task.

  G. H. Hardy

  Science, Tasks, Raw Materials

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.99, Cambridge University Press

• I wrote a great deal during the next ten [early] years,but very little of any importance; there are not more than four or five papers which I can still remember with some satisfaction.

  G. H. Hardy

  Science, Years, Paper

• There is always more in one of Ramanujan's formulae than meets the eye, as anyone who sets to work to verify those which look the easiest will soon discover. In some the interest lies very deep, in others comparatively near the surface; but there is not one which is not curious and entertaining.

  G. H. Hardy

  Lying, Eye, Science

• It is rather astonishing how little practical value scientific knowledge has for ordinary men, how dull and commonplace such of it as has value is, and how its value seems almost to vary inversely to its reputed utility.

  G. H. Hardy

  Knowledge, Science, Men

  G. H. Hardy (1992). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.117, Cambridge University Press

• The creative life was the only one for a serious man.

  G. H. Hardy

  Life, Science, Men

• I was at my best at a little past forty, when I was a professor at Oxford.

  G. H. Hardy

  Science, Past, Oxford

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.148, Cambridge University Press

• A man who sets out to justify his existence and his activities has to distinguish two different questions. The first is whether the work which he does is worth doing; and the second is why he does it (whatever its value may be).

  G. H. Hardy

  Science, Men, Two

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.66, Cambridge University Press

• A science or an art may be said to be "useful" if its development increases, even indirectly, the material well-being and comfort of men, it promotes happiness, using that word in a crude and commonplace way.

  G. H. Hardy

  Art, Science, Men

• Sometimes one has to say difficult things, but one ought to say them as simply as one knows how.

  G. H. Hardy

  Knowledge, Science, Simplicity

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.47, Cambridge University Press

• I propose to put forward an apology for mathematics; and I may be told that it needs none, since there are now few studies more generally recognized, for good reasons or bad, as profitable and praiseworthy.

  G. H. Hardy

  Apology, Science, Needs

• Good work is no done by "humble" men. It is one of the first duties of a professor, for example, in any subject, to exaggerate a little both the importance of his subject and his own importance in it. A man who is always asking "Is what I do worth while?" and "Am I the right person to do it?" will always be ineffective himself and a discouragement to others. He must shut his eyes a little and think a little more of his subject and himself than they deserve. This is not too difficult: it is harder not to make his subject and himself ridiculous by shutting his eyes too tightly.

  G. H. Hardy

  Eye, Hard Work, Humble

• A mathematician ... has no material to work with but ideas, and so his patterns are likely to last longer, since ideas wear less with time than words.

  G. H. Hardy

  Science, Ideas, Patterns

• I do not remember having felt, as a boy, any passion for mathematics, and such notions as I may have had of the career of a mathematician were far from noble. I thought of mathematics in terms of examinations and scholarships: I wanted to beat other boys, and this seemed to be the way in which I could do so most decisively.

  G. H. Hardy

  Passion, Science, Boys

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.15, Cambridge University Press

• The mathematician is in much more direct contact with reality. ... [Whereas] the physicist's reality, whatever it may be, has few or none of the attributes which common sense ascribes instinctively to reality. A chair may be a collection of whirling electrons.

  G. H. Hardy

  Science, Reality, Common Sense

• [I was advised] to read Jordan's 'Cours d'analyse'; and I shall never forget the astonishment with which I read that remarkable work, the first inspiration for so many mathematicians of my generation, and learnt for the first time as I read it what mathematics really meant.

  G. H. Hardy

  Inspiration, Science, Firsts

• A chess problem is genuine mathematics, but it is in some way "trivial" mathematics. However, ingenious and intricate, however original and surprising the moves, there is something essential lacking. Chess problems are unimportant. The best mathematics is serious as well as beautiful-"important" if you like, but the word is very ambiguous, and "serious" expresses what I mean much better.

  G. H. Hardy

  Beautiful, Moving, Mean

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