Mathematician Quotes - Page 13

• 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

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• An accomplished mathematician, i.e. a most wretched orator.

  Isaac Barrow

  Science, Accomplished, Orators

  Isaac Barrow (1734). “The Usefulness of Mathematical Learning Explained and Demonstrated: Being Mathematical Lectures Read in the Publick Schools at the University of Cambridge”, p.32

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• Abel has left mathematicians something to keep them busy for five hundred years.

  Charles Hermite

  Science, Years, Abel

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• Some humans are mathematicians-others aren't.

  Jane Goodall

  Science, Humans

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• The mathematician, carried along on his flood of symbols, dealing apparently with purely formal truths, may still reach results of endless importance for our description of the physical universe.

  Karl Pearson

  Math, May, Results

  Karl Pearson (1900). “The grammar of science”, p.505, Рипол Классик

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• Asked for a testimony to the effect that Emmy Noether was a great woman mathematician, he said: I can testify that she is a great mathematician, but that she is a woman, I cannot swear.

  Edmund Landau

  Women, Said, Mathematical

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• You can pay attention to the fact, in which case you'll probably become a mathematician, or you can ignore it, in which case you'll probably become a physicist.

  Len Evans

  Funny, Science, Technology

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• Oh yes, children often commit murders. And quite clever ones, too. Some murderers, particularly the distinguished ones who are going to make great names for themselves, start amazingly early.... Like mathematicians and musicians. Poets develop later.

  John Lee Mahin

  Children, Clever, Names

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• [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

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• We know that mathematicians care no more for logic than logicians for mathematics. The two eyes of science are mathematics and logic; the mathematical set puts out the logical eye, the logical set puts out the mathematical eye; each believing that it sees better with one eye than with two. Note that De Morgan, himself, only had sight with only one eye.

  Augustus De Morgan

  Believe, Eye, Science

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• We academic scientists move within a certain sphere, we can go on being useless up to a point, in the confidence that sooner or later some use will be found for our studies. The mathematician, of course, prides himself on being totally useless, but usually turns out to be the most useful of the lot. He finds the solution but he is not interested in what the problem is: sooner or later, someone will find the problem to which his solution is the answer.

  John Desmond Bernal

  Moving, Science, Pride

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• To a mathematician the eleventh means only a single unit: to the bushman who cannot count further than his ten fingers it is an incalculable myriad.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Mean, Science, Bushmen

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: Collected Articles, Lectures, Essays and Letters: Thoughts and Studies from the Renowned Dramaturge and Author of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Pygmalion, Arms and The Man, Saint Joan, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.311, e-artnow

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• There have been only three epoch-making mathematicians, Archimedes, Newton, and Eisenstein.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Science, Three, Newton

  "Mathematics, Queen and Servant of Science". Book by Eric Temple Bell, 1951.

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• I must admit that outside the university, it is difficult to be a pure mathematician. No one in my family understands what I do. My neighbors wonder why I spend all my time in my study scribbling with pencil on a yellow pad of paper instead of going outside to mow the lawn.

  Isadore Singer

  Yellow, Paper, Pads

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• A mathematician either has a feeling for equations and an understanding and delight in it, not only in the purity of it, but in its beauty as well. I don't think that's something that you learn at school. I think you can get better in mathematics on a school level, but when you're talking about being a mathematician, I think that's definitely a gift of genes or whatever, you know? Whatever your pool is.

  John Hurt

  School, Thinking, Feelings

  Source: film.avclub.com

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• The mathematicians of this world regard themselves as 'physicists,' yet they know next to nothing about Physics.

  Bill Gaede

  World, Next, Physics

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• Life would be stunted and narrow if we could feel no significance in the world around us beyond that which can be weighed and measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.

  Arthur Eddington

  Nature, Would Be, Tools

  Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1933). “The nature of the physical world”

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• As there are so many who talk prose without knowing it, or, again, who syllogize without having the least idea what a syllogism is, so economists have long been mathematicians without being aware of the fact.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Ideas, Knowing, Long

  William Stanley Jevons (1970). “The Theory of Political Economy”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• The concept of an independent system is a pure creation of the imagination. For no material system is or can ever be perfectly isolated from the rest of the world. Nevertheless it completes the mathematician's "blank form of a universe" without which his investigations are impossible. It enables him to introduce into his geometrical space, not only masses and configurations, but also physical structure and chemical composition. Just as Newton first conclusively showed that this is a world of masses, so Willard Gibbs first revealed it as a world of systems.

  Lawrence Joseph Henderson

  Independent, Science, Space

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• Ohm (a distinguished mathematician, be it noted) brought into order a host of puzzling facts connecting electromotive force and electric current in conductors, which all previous electricians had only succeeded in loosely binding together qualitatively under some rather vague statements. Even as late as 20 years ago, "quantity" and "tension" were much used by men who did not fully appreciate Ohm's law.

  Oliver Heaviside

  Science, Men, Order

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• Need we add that mathematicians themselves are not infallible?

  Henri Poincare

  Add, Needs, Infallible

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.641, Modern Library

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• Some mathematicians didn't even perceive of the possibility of a picture being helpful. To the contrary, I went into an orgy of looking at pictures by the hundreds; the machines became a little bit better.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Machines, Littles, Helpful

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Two centuries ago Carl Friedrich Gauss, one of the greatest mathematicians and a founder of number theory, described his brainchild as "the queen of mathematics." Queens are regal, but they are also largely decorative, and this nuance was not lost on Gauss.

  Ian Stewart

  Beauty, Art, Queens

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• A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse, not a remarkable mathematician.

  Samuel Johnson

  Horse, Animal, Remarkable

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• I've been a professor of mathematics at Harvard and at Yale. At Yale for a long time. But I'm not a mathematician only. I'm a professor of physics, of economics, a long list. Each element of this list is normal. The combination of these elements is very rare at best.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Yale, Long, Lists

  Source: bigthink.com

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