Differential Calculus Quotes

• But how is one to make a scientist understand that there is something unalterably deranged about differential calculus, quantum theory, or the obscene and so inanely liturgical ordeals of the precession of the equinoxes.

  Antonin Artaud

  Math, Understanding, Scientist

  Antonin Artaud, Susan Sontag (1976). “Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings”, p.497, Univ of California Press

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• I'm very good at integral and differential calculus, I know the scientific names of beings animalculous; In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

  W. S. Gilbert

  Math, Animal, Vegetables

  'The Pirates of Penzance' (1879) act 1

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• But just as much as it is easy to find the differential [derivative] of a given quantity, so it is difficult to find the integral of a given differential. Moreover, sometimes we cannot say with certainty whether the integral of a given quantity can be found or not.

  Johann Bernoulli

  Education, Math, Derivatives

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• I never failed in mathematics. Before I was fifteen I had mastered differential and integral calculus.

  Albert Einstein

  Fifteen, Mathematics, Calculus

  "Greatest Living Mathematician Failed in Mathematics" in "Ripley's Believe It or Not!", 1935.

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• I am the very model of a modern major general

  W. S. Gilbert

  Modern, Minerals, Calculus

  The Pirates of Penzance act 1 (1879)

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• Science is the Differential Calculus of the mind. Art the Integral Calculus; they may be beautiful when apart, but are greatest only when combined.

  Ronald Ross

  Beautiful, Art, Science

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• Among all of the mathematical disciplines the theory of differential equations is the most important... It furnishes the explanation of all those elementary manifestations of nature which involve time.

  Sophus Lie

  Education, Discipline, Important

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• Therefore, I have attacted [the problem of the catenary] which I had hitherto not attempted, and with my key [the differential calculus] happily opened its secret.
  Acta eruditorum

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Keys, Secret, Problem

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• Arithmetic starts with the integers and proceeds by successively enlarging the number system by rational and negative numbers, irrational numbers, etc... But the next quite logical step after the reals, namely the introduction of infinitesimals, has simply been omitted. I think, in coming centuries it will be considered a great oddity in the history of mathematics that the first exact theory of infinitesimals was developed 300 years after the invention of the differential calculus.

  Abraham Robinson

  Thinking, Oddities, Discovery

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• Nothing has afforded me so convincing a proof of the unity of the Deity as these purely mental conceptions of numerical and mathematical science.

  Mary Somerville

  Math, Unity, Deities

  Kathryn A. Neeley, Mary Somerville (2001). “Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind”, p.180, Cambridge University Press

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• Nothing has afforded me so convincing a proof of the unity of the Deity as these purely mental conceptions of numerical and mathematical science which have been by slow degrees vouchsafed to man, and are still granted in these latter times by the Differential Calculus, now superseded by the Higher Algebra, all of which must have existed in that sublimely omniscient Mind from eternity.

  Mary Somerville

  Math, Men, Unity

  Kathryn A. Neeley, Mary Somerville (2001). “Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind”, p.180, Cambridge University Press

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• As professor in the Polytechnic School in Zürich I found myself for the first time obliged to lecture upon the elements of the differential calculus and felt more keenly than ever before the lack of a really scientific foundation for arithmetic.

  Richard Dedekind

  School, Foundation, Elements

  Richard Dedekind (1901). “Essays on the Theory of Numbers: I. Continuity and Irrational Numbers, II. The Nature and Meaning of Numbers”

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