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James Joseph Sylvester Quotes

Mathematician

James Joseph Sylvester was an outstanding mathematician known for his contributions to algebra, number theory, and mathematical physics. Born on September 3, 1814, and died on March 15, 1897, Sylvester's work had a profound impact on later mathematicians.

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Famous James Joseph Sylvester Quotes

“As the prerogative of Natural Science is to cultivate a taste for observation, so that of Mathematics is, almost from the starting point, to stimulate the faculty of invention.”

Natural Taste Mathematics Starting Invention Observation Faculty Starting Point Natural Science Prerogative

Book: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

Source: 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

“[Mathematics] unceasingly calls forth the faculties of observation and comparison; one of its principal weapons is induction: it has frequent recourse to trial and verification; and it affords a boundless scope for the exercise of the highest efforts of imagination and invention.”

Imagination Effort Exercise Weapons Highest Mathematics Trials Invention Observation Comparison Faculty Principal Scope Boundless Recourse Verification

Author:James Joseph Sylvester

“I know, indeed, and can conceive of no pursuit so antagonistic to the cultivation of the oratorical faculty ... as the study of Mathematics. An eloquent mathematician must, from the nature of things, ever remain as rare a phenomenon as a talking fish, and it is certain that the more anyone gives himself up to the study of oratorical effect the less will he find himself in a fit state to mathematicize.”

Source: The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester

“There is no study in the world which brings into more harmonious action all the faculties of the mind than [mathematics], ... or, like this, seems to raise them, by successive steps of initiation, to higher and higher states of conscious intellectual being.”

World Mind States Seems Action Steps Study Higher Intellectual Conscious Mathematics Raises Math Mathematical Faculty Harmonious Initiation

Book:Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association, Exeter, August 19th, 1869

Source: Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association, Exeter, August 19th, 1869