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Quote by Rene Thom

“Topology is precisely the mathematical discipline that allows the passage from local to global.”

Quote by Rene Thom

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Rene Thom
Rene Thom

Rene Thom was a renowned mathematician known for his contributions to topology and differential equations. Born on September 2, 1923, and passing away on October 25, 2002, Thom's work was particularly influential in the fields of chaos theory and structural stability. more

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“A mathematician who can only generalise is like a monkey who can only climb up a tree, and a mathematician who can only specialise is like a monkey who can only climb down a tree. In fact neither the up monkey nor the down monkey is a viable creature. A real monkey must find food and escape his enemies and so must be able to incessantly climb up and down. A real mathematician must be able to generalise and specialise.”

“The question you raise, 'How can such a formulation lead to computations?' doesn't bother me in the least! Throughout my whole life as a mathematician, the possibility of making explicit, elegant computations has always come out by itself, as a byproduct of a thorough conceptual understanding of what was going on. Thus I never bothered about whether what would come out would be suitable for this or that, but just tried to understand - and it always turned out that understanding was all that mattered.”