Mathematician Quotes - Page 17

• Like musicians who can read and write complicated scores in a world without sounds, for us mathematics is a source of delight, excitement, and even controversy which are hard to share with non mathematicians. In our small micro-cosmos we should ever seek the right balance between competition and solidarity, criticism and empathy, exclusion and inclusion.

  Gil Kalai

  Writing, Science, Empathy

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• If there should chance to be any mathematicians who, ignorant in mathematics yet pretending to skill in that science, should dare, upon the authority of some passage of Scripture wrested to their purpose, to condemn and censure my hypothesis, I value them not, and scorn their inconsiderate judgement.
  De Revolutionibus Coelestibus

  Nicolaus Copernicus

  Skills, Judgement, Ignorant

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• It is indubitable that a 50-year-old mathematician knows the mathematics he learned at 20 or 30, but has only notions, often rather vague, of the mathematics of his epoch, i.e. the period of time when he is 50.

  Jean Dieudonne

  Years, Mathematics, Periods

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• Mathemata mathematicis scribuntur
  Mathematics is written for mathematicians
  De Revolutionibus

  Nicolaus Copernicus

  Mathematics, Mathematical, Written

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• I constantly meet people who are doubtful, generally without due reason, about their potential capacity [as mathematicians]. The first test is whether you got anything out of geometry. To have disliked or failed to get on with other [mathematical] subjects need mean nothing; much drill and drudgery is unavoidable before they can get started, and bad teaching can make them unintelligible even to a born mathematician.

  John Edensor Littlewood

  Teaching, Failure, Mean

  "Littlewood's Miscellany".

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• It is the invaluable merit of the great Basle mathematician Leonard Euler, to have freed the analytical calculus from all geometric bounds, and thus to have established analysis as an independent science, which from his time on has maintained an unchallenged leadership in the field of mathematics.

  Thomas Reid

  Leadership, Independent, Math

  "Mathematical Maxims and Minims". Book by Nicholas J. Rose, 1988.

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• It is a common public relations gimmick to give the entire credit for the solution of famous problems to the one mathematician who is responsible for the last step.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Science, Giving, Lasts

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• The library is the mathematician's laboratory.

  Paul Halmos

  Library, Laboratory

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• The main duty of the historian of mathematics, as well as his fondest privilege, is to explain the humanity of mathematics, to illustrate its greatness, beauty and dignity, and to describe how the incessant efforts and accumulated genius of many generations have built up that magnificent monument, the object of our most legitimate pride as men, and of our wonder, humility and thankfulness, as individuals. The study of the history of mathematics will not make better mathematicians but gentler ones, it will enrich their minds, mellow their hearts, and bring out their finer qualities.

  George Sarton

  Heart, Humility, Pride

  George Sarton (1936). “The study of the history of mathematics and the study of the history of science”

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• A mathematician experiments, amasses information, makes a conjecture, finds out that it does not work, gets confused and then tries to recover. A good mathematician eventually does so - and proves a theorem.

  Steven G. Krantz

  Confused, Science, Trying

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• A surprising proportion of mathematicians are accomplished musicians. Is it because music and mathematics share patterns that are beautiful?

  Martin Gardner

  Beautiful, Education, Musician

  "Engaging. Interactive. Informative". The Dover Math and Science Newsletter, www.doverpublications.com. May 16, 2011.

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• Mathematics - the unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to human affairs.

  Isaac Barrow

  Math, Foundation, Affair

  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.28

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• The whole thing that makes a mathematician’s life worthwhile is that he gets the grudging admiration of three or four colleagues.

  Donald Knuth

  Four, Three, Admiration

  Interview with Jack Woehr, Dr. Dobb's Journal, April 1996.

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• Even the great scientists have reported that their creative break-throughs came at a time of mental quietude. The surprising result of a nationwide inquiry among America's most eminent mathematicians, including Einstein, to find out their working methods, was that thinking 'plays only a subordinate part in the brief, decisive phase of the creative act itself'.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Thinking, Play, America

  Eckhart Tolle (2010). “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment”, p.24, New World Library

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• Mathematics ... is indispensable as an intellectual technique. In many subjects, to think at all is to think like a mathematician.

  Robert M. Hutchins

  Thinking, Intellectual, Technique

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• This is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher. The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.

  Albert Einstein

  Income, World, Philosopher

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• No form of art repeats or imitates successfully all that can be said by another; the writer conveys his experience of life along a channel of communication closed to painter, mathematician, musician, film-maker.

  Storm Jameson

  Art, Communication, Musician

  Storm Jameson (2011). “Parthian Words”, p.88, A&C Black

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• Nobody is publicly accepted as an expert on poetry unless he displays the sign of poet, mathematician, etc., but universal men want no sign and make hardly any distinction between the crafts of poet and embroiderer. Universal men are not called poets or mathematicians, etc. But they are all these things and judges of them too. No one could guess what they are, and they will talk about whatever was being talked about when they came in. One quality is not more noticeable in them than another, unless it becomes necessary to put it into practice, and then we remember it.

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Practice, Judging

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• Intuition is a combination of insight and imagination that was once attributed to spiritual communication. Mathematicians call it 'fuzzy logic,' drawing conclusions from vague or subjective input. The mind becomes aware without the direct intervention of reasoning. Once you can imagine something you can begin the process of creating it. Executives use intuition to make many product, investment, and hiring decisions, even if they deny it. Success in business may depend on an accurate gut.

  Jennifer James

  Spiritual, Business, Communication

  Jennifer James (2012). “Thinking In The Future Tense”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

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• I am persuaded that this method [for calculating the volume of a sphere] will be of no little service to mathematics. For I foresee that once it is understood and established, it will be used to discover other theorems which have not yet occurred to me, by other mathematicians, now living or yet unborn.

  Archimedes

  Education, Math, Littles

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• The constructs of the mathematical mind are at the same time free and necessary. The individual mathematician feels free to define his notions and set up his axioms as he pleases. But the question is will he get his fellow mathematician interested in the constructs of his imagination. We cannot help the feeling that certain mathematical structures which have evolved through the combined efforts of the mathematical community bear the stamp of a necessity not affected by the accidents of their historical birth.

  Hermann Weyl

  Math, Imagination, Effort

  Hermann Weyl (1968). “Gesammelte Abhandlungen”

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• Newton was the greatest genius that ever existed, and the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.

  Joseph-Louis Lagrange

  Genius, World, Newton

  "Introduction to Astronomy" by F. R. Moulton, New York, (p. 199), 1906.

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• Throughout the 1960s and 1970s devoted Beckett readers greeted each successively shorter volume from the master with a mixture of awe and apprehensiveness; it was like watching a great mathematician wielding an infinitesimal calculus, his equations approaching nearer and still nearer to the null point.

  John Banville

  Math, Null, Mixtures

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• When I was 13 or 14, I started devouring novels; literature took quite a while to take me over, but it caught up just in time to save me from becoming a mathematician.

  Mark Haddon

  Becoming, Literature, Devouring

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• I am accustomed, as a professional mathematician, to living in a sort of vacuum, surrounded by people who declare with an odd sort of pride that they are mathematically illiterate.

  David Mumford

  Pride, Math, People

  "Mathematics without Apologies: Portrait of a Problematic Vocation". Book by Michael Harris, 2015.

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