Mathematician Quotes - Page 24

• The human brain finds it extremely hard to cope with a new level of abstraction. This is why it was well into the eighteenth century before mathematicians felt comfortable dealing with zero and with negative numbers, and why even today many people cannot accept the square root of minus-one as a genuine number.

  Keith Devlin

  Zero, Roots, Numbers

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• Are not most professional mathematicians spared all trouble incident to income?

  Tobias Dantzig

  Income, Trouble, Incidents

  Tobias Dantzig (1954). “Number, the Language of Science: A Critical Survey Written for the Cultured Non-mathematician”

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• Mathematicians are proud of the fact that, generally, they do their work with a piece of chalk and a blackboard. They value hand-done proofs above all else. A big question in mathematics today is whether or not computational proofs are legitimate. Some mathematicians won't accept computational proofs and insist that a real proof must be done by the human hand and mind, using equations.

  Margaret Wertheim

  Real, Mind, Done

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The practical man demands an appearance of reality at least. Always dealing in the concrete, he regards mathematical terms not as symbols or thought but as images of reality. A system acceptable to the mathematician because of its inner consistency may appear to the practical man to be full of contradictions because of the incomplete manner in which it represents reality.

  Tobias Dantzig

  Reality, Men, Consistency

  Tobias Dantzig (1954). “Number, the Language of Science: A Critical Survey Written for the Cultured Non-mathematician”

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• No mathematician of equal stature has risen from our generation... Hilbert was singularly free from national and racial prejudices; in all public questions, be they political, social or spiritual, he stood forever on the side of freedom.

  Hermann Weyl

  Spiritual, Our Generation, Forever

  Hermann Weyl (2013). “Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy”, p.93, Courier Corporation

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• I am genuinely sorry for scientists of the younger generation who never knew Fisher personally. So long as you avoided a handful of subjects like inverse probability that would turn Fisher in the briefest possible moment from extreme urbanity into a boiling cauldron of wrath, you got by with little worse than a thick head from the port which he, like the Cambridge mathematician J. E. Littlewood, loved to drink in the evening. And on the credit side you gained a cherished memory of English spoken in a Shakespearean style and delivered in the manner of a Spanish grandee.

  Fred Hoyle

  Sorry, Memories, Wrath

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• Land surveyors can spend as much time reading legislation, bylaws, and engineering documents as we spend in front of an instrument in the field or calculating coordinates for a subdivision. We are mathematicians, historians, project managers, advocates, engineers, and even chainsaw operators!

  Mark Mason

  Reading, Engineering, Land

  "Career Spotlight: What I Do as a Land Surveyor". Interview with Andy Orin, lifehacker.com. December 10, 2015.

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• Mathematics is fun if you don't let mathematicians push you around when you are doing it.

  Jack Edmonds

  Fun, Mathematics, Ifs

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• I'm a mathematician because I'm too slow to be a writer.

  Jack Edmonds

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• Nobody tells young writers it's okay if you're not very good, you'll get better. So I just thought I'm not very good, so I should try to do every other thing besides writing. That's how I ended up being a hitchhiker, a world traveler, and a mathematician.

  Bonnie Jo Campbell

  Writing, Get Better, Trying

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I always like to make explicit the fact that before I went off not too long ago to fight in the trenches, I was a mathematician by profession. I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn't as though I had to do this, you know, I could be making, oh, three thousand dollars a year just teaching.

  Tom Lehrer

  Teaching, Mean, Fighting

  "Song: "Lobachevsky"("Songs by Tom Lehrer")". 1953.

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• I suppose the situation varies from field to field. If you're a mathematician, your proficiency in English may not be such a problem. If you're in the humanities or social sciences, there is no doubt that it is a handicap for you.

  Henry Rosovsky

  Humanity, Doubt, May

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• ...the mathematician uses an indirect definition of congruence, making use of the fact that the axiom of parallels together with an additional condition can replace the definition of congruence.

  Hans Reichenbach

  Together, Use, Definitions

  Hans Reichenbach (1958). “Philosophie Der Raum-Zeit-Lehre”, p.87, Courier Corporation

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• Democracy can't work. Mathematicians, peasants, and animals, that's all there is - so democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work. Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Animal, Men, Wisest Man

  Robert A. Heinlein (2007). “Glory Road”, p.277, Macmillan

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• Our faith in Mathematics is not likely to wane if we openly acknowledge that the personalities of even the greatest mathematicians may be as flawed as those of anyone else.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Personality, May, Mathematics

  Gian-Carlo Rota (2008). “Indiscrete Thoughts”, p.3, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Among mathematicians in general, three main categories may be distinguished; and perhaps the names logicians, formalists, and intuitionists may serve to characterize them.

  Felix Klein

  Names, Three, May

  Felix Klein (1893). “The Evanston Colloquium: Lectures on Mathematics Delivered from Aug. 28 to Sept. 9, 1893 Before Members of the Congress of Mathematics Held in Connection with the World's Fair in Chicago at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill”

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• An old French mathematician said: "A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street." This clearness and ease of comprehension, here insisted on for a mathematical theory, I should still more demand for a mathematical problem if it is to be perfect; for what is clear and easily comprehended attracts, the complicated repels us.

  David Hilbert

  Men, Perfect, Ease

  "Mathematical Problems". Lecture delivered before the International Congress of Mathematicians at Paris, translated by Maby Winton Newson, mathcs.clarku.edu. 1900.

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• We are concerned, not with the development of just one capacity, such as that of a mathematician, or a scientist, or a musician, but with the total development of the student as a human
  being.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Musician, Development, Students

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (2005). “Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning”, p.14, New World Library

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• ... a result once generally accepted by mathematicians is seldom retracted, and then only with great pangs.
  The Nature of Mathematics

  Max Black

  Accepted, Mathematics, Results

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• The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not early drop off, nor do its pores become clogged with the earthy particles blown from the dusty highways of vulgar life.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Life, Wings, Long

  James Joseph Sylvester (1870). “The Laws of Verse: Or Principles of Versification Exemplified in Metrical Translations, Together with an Annotated Reprint of the Inaugural Presidential Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association at Exeter”, p.122

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• The real work of us mathematicians, from now until, roughly, fifty years from now, when computers won't need us anymore, is to make the transition from human-centric math to machine-centric math as smooth and efficient as possible.

  Doron Zeilberger

  Real, Math, Years

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• 2+2=5 wasn't intentional. I thought you carry a 1 every time there are two 2's in an equation. I'm not stupid, the mathematicians is stupid

  Thom Yorke

  Stupid, Two, Equations

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• Early in my career, I wanted to be a mathematician.

  Jerry Buss

  Careers, Wanted

  "The answer man". Interview with Steve Springer, www.espn.co.uk. March 24, 2010.

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• I believe that proving is not a natural activity for mathematicians.

  Rene Thom

  Believe, Natural, Prove

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• [writing to Stirling in 1740]
  ... an unlucky accident happened to some of the French mathematicians in Peru. It seems that they were shewing French gallantry to the natives' wives, who have murdered their servants destroyed their instruments and burnt their papers, the Gentlemen escaping narrowly themselves. What an ugly article this will make in a journal.

  Colin Maclaurin

  Writing, Escaping, Wife

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