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Quote by Pierre Deligne

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Pierre Deligne
Pierre Deligne

Pierre Deligne is a renowned mathematician known for his contributions to algebraic geometry. Born on October 3, 1944, he is of French nationality. Deligne's achievements in mathematics include solving the famous Weil conjecture, for which he was awarded the Fields Medal in 1988. 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.”

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Author:George Polya
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“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.”

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Author:Alexander Grothendieck
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“It is hard to communicate understanding because that is something you get by living with a problem for a long time. You study it, perhaps for years, you get the feel of it and it is in your bones. You can't convey that to anyone else. Having studied the problem for five years you may be able to present it in such a way that it would take somebody else less time to get to that point than it took you. But if they haven't struggled with the problem and seen all the pitfalls, then they haven't really understood it.”

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Author:Michael Atiyah
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“This common and unfortunate fact of the lack of adequate presentation of basic ideas and motivations of almost any mathematical theory is probably due to the binary nature of mathematical perception. Either you have no inkling of an idea, or, once you have understood it, the very idea appears so embarrassingly obvious that you feel reluctant to say it aloud.”

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Author:Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov
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