Mathematics Quotes - Page 31

• Mathematics is an experimental science, and definitions do not come first, but later on.

  Oliver Heaviside

  Science, Definitions, Firsts

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• The best result of mathematics is to be able to do without it.

  Oliver Heaviside

  Able, Results

  Oliver Heaviside (2008). “Electromagnetic Theory”, p.7, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Poincaré [was] the last man to take practically all mathematics, pure and applied, as his province. ... Few mathematicians have had the breadth of philosophic vision that Poincaré had, and none in his superior in the gift of clear exposition.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Men, Vision, Lasts

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• But actually a code is a language for translating one thing into another. And mathematics is the language of science. My big thesis is that although the world looks messy and chaotic, if you translate it into the world of numbers and shapes, patterns emerge and you start to understand why things are the way they are.

  Marcus du Sautoy

  Numbers, Looks, World

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• It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul.

  Sofia Kovalevskaya

  Math, Soul, Impossible

  "Sónya Kovalévsky: Her Recollections of Childhood" by Sofia Kovalevskaya, 1895.

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• It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

  Arthur Eddington

  Math, Perfect, Impossible

  Arthur Eddington (2012). “New Pathways in Science: Messenger Lectures (1934)”, p.105, Cambridge University Press

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• A time will however come (as I believe) when physiology will invade and destroy mathematical physics, as the latter has destroyed geometry.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Time, Believe, Math

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• In passing, I firmly believe that research should be offset by a certain amount of teaching, if only as a change from the agony of research. The trouble, however, I freely admit, is that in practice you get either no teaching, or else far too much.

  John Edensor Littlewood

  Change, Teaching, Believe

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• To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.

  Blaise Pascal

  Horse, Believe, Math

  "Pensees".

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• Since you are now studying geometry and trigonometry, I will give you a problem. A ship sails the ocean. It left Boston with a cargo of wool. It grosses 200 tons. It is bound for Le Havre. The mainmast is broken, the cabin boy is on deck, there are 12 passengers aboard, the wind is blowing East-North-East, the clock points to a quarter past three in the afternoon. It is the month of May. How old is the captain?

  Gustave Flaubert

  Ocean, Math, Boys

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• I read in the proof sheets of Hardy on Ramanujan: "As someone said, each of the positive integers was one of his personal friends." My reaction was, "I wonder who said that; I wish I had." In the next proof-sheets I read (what now stands), "It was Littlewood who said..."

  John Edensor Littlewood

  Friendship, Math, Wish

  John Edensor Littlewood, Béla Bollobás (1986). “Littlewood's Miscellany”, p.61, Cambridge University Press

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• Four circles to the kissing come, The smaller are the benter. The bend is just the inverse of The distance from the centre. Though their intrigue left Euclid dumb There's now no need for rule of thumb. Since zero bend's a dead straight line And concave bends have minus sign, The sum of squares of all four bends Is half the square of their sum.

  Frederick Soddy

  Zero, Distance, Math

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• In mathematics and science, there is no difference in the intelligence of men and women. The difference in genes between men and women is simply the Y chromosome, which has nothing to do with intelligence.

  Christiane Nusslein-Volhard

  Men, Differences, Genes

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• My specific goal is to revolutionize the future of the species. Mathematics is just another way of predicting the future.

  Ralph Abraham

  Goal, Way, Predicting The Future

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• We in science are spoiled by the success of mathematics. Mathematics is the study of problems so simple that they have good solutions

  Whitfield Diffie

  Simple, Study, Problem

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• In mathematics, our freedom lies in the questions we ask — and in how we pursue them — but not in the answers awaiting us.

  Steven Strogatz

  Lying, Answers, Pursue

  Steven Strogatz (2012). “The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity”, p.9, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Logic leaves us no choice. In that sense, math always involves both invention and discovery: we invent the concepts but discover their consequences. … in mathematics our freedom lies in the questions we ask – and in how we pursue them – but not in the answers awaiting us.

  Steven Strogatz

  Lying, Math, Discovery

  Steven Strogatz (2012). “The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity”, p.9, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Write as you like, use the rhythms that come out, try different instruments, sit at the piano, destroy the metric, shout instead of singing, blow your guitar and ring the horn. Hate mathematics, and love eddies. Creation is a bird without a flight plan, that will never fly in a straight line.

  Violeta Parra

  Hate, Writing, Blow

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• Science progresses best when observations force us to alter our preconceptions.

  Vera Rubin

  Science, Engineering, Progress

  "In Quest of the Universe". Book by Karl F. Kuhn, 2007.

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• The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning.

  Eugene Wigner

  Grateful, Law, Miracle

  Eugene Paul Wigner (2012). “Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses”, p.549, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Talk with M. Hermite. He never evokes a concrete image, yet you soon perceive that the more abstract entities are to him like living creatures.

  Henri Poincare

  Life, Math, Abstract

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• Time was when all the parts of the subject were dissevered, when algebra, geometry, and arithmetic either lived apart or kept up cold relations of acquaintance confined to occasional calls upon one another; but that is now at an end; they are drawn together and are constantly becoming more and more intimately related and connected by a thousand fresh ties, and we may confidently look forward to a time when they shall form but one body with one soul.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Life, Math, Ties

  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.124

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• Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Life, Dream, Real

  "The World of Mathematics". Book by James R. Newman, p. 1832, 1956.

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• In mathematical analysis we call x the undetermined part of line a: the rest we don't call y, as we do in common life, but a-x. Hence mathematical language has great advantages over the common language.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Life, Math, Lines

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• Archimedes constructing his circle pays with his life for his defective biological adaptation to immediate circumstances.

  Ernst Mach

  Life, Math, Circles

  Ernst Mach (2012). “Knowledge and Error: Sketches on the Psychology of Enquiry”, p.45, Springer Science & Business Media

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