“The scientist has to take 95 per cent of his subject on trust. He has to because he can't possibly do all the experiments, therefore he has to take on trust the experiments all his colleagues and predecessors have done. Whereas a mathematician doesn't have to take anything on trust. Any theorem that's proved, he doesn't believe it, really, until he goes through the proof himself, and therefore he knows his whole subject from scratch. He's absolutely 100 per cent certain of it. And that gives him an extraordinary conviction of certainty, and an arrogance that scientists don't have.” KnowsGivingBelieveDoneWholeScienceCertainBeliefSubjectsScientistExtraordinaryConvictionProofExperimentsCertaintyArroganceCentsMathematicianColleaguesScratchesPredecessorsTheorems Author:Christopher Zeeman
“But as no two (theoreticians) agree on this (skin friction) or any other subject, some not agreeing today with what they wrote a year ago, I think we might put down all their results, add them together, and then divide by the number of mathematicians, and thus find the average coefficient of error. (1908)” ThinkingYearsTwoMightTodayTogetherScienceResultsNumbersSubjectsYears AgoSkinsAgreeAddErrorsAverageDividesMathematicianFriction Author:Hiram Maxim
“I am obliged to interpolate some remarks on a very difficult subject: proof and its importance in mathematics. All physicists, and a good many quite respectable mathematicians, are contemptuous about proof. I have heard Professor Eddington, for example, maintain that proof, as pure mathematicians understand it, is really quite uninteresting and unimportant, and that no one who is really certain that he has found something good should waste his time looking for proof.” ShouldCertainFoundDifficultHeardSubjectsExamplePureWasteImportanceMathematicsProofGood ManProfessorsMathematicianPhysicistObligedRemarksRespectableUnimportantContemptuousDifficult Subjects Author:G. H. Hardy
“Mathematics ... is indispensable as an intellectual technique. In many subjects, to think at all is to think like a mathematician.” ThinkingSubjectsIntellectualMathematicsTechniqueMathematicianIndispensable Author:Robert M. Hutchins
“[John Wheeler] rejuvenated general relativity; he made it an experimental subject and took it away from the mathematicians” MadeSubjectsMade ItMathematicianRelativityGeneral Relativity Author:Freeman Dyson
“The computer was, to the best of my feelings about the subject, not thinking like a mathematician, and it was much more successful, because it was thinking not like a mathematician.” ThinkingFeelingsScienceSuccessfulSubjectsComputerMathematicsMathematician Author:Kenneth Appel
“A considreable portion of my high school trigonometry course was devoted to the solution of oblique triangles... I have still not had an excuse for using my talents for solving oblique triangles. If a professional mathematician never uses these dull techniques in a highly varied career, why must all high school students devote several weeks to the subject?” IfsStillsUseSchoolCoursesCareersWeekSubjectsTalentStudentsSolutionsHigh SchoolExcuseTechniqueDullPortionsDevotedMathematicianTrianglesFormal EducationHigh School StudentsTrigonometry Author:John G. Kemeny
“We mathematicians are used to the fact that our subject is widely misunderstood, perhaps more than any other subject (except perhaps linguistics).” FactsUsedSubjectsMathematicianMisunderstoodLinguistics Author:Keith Devlin
“Should I not be proud, when for twenty years I have had to admit to myself that the great Newton and all the mathematicians and noble calculators along with him were involved in a decisive error with respect to the doctrine of color, and that I among millions was the only one who knew what was right in this great subject of nature?” ShouldYearsMillionsSubjectsColorProudInvolvedTwentiesErrorsNobleDoctrineShould IMathematicianBe ProudNewtonCalculators Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“The Internet gives you access to a lot of material, and it's fun to sit and read. I go to something like Wikipedia and look at different topics... I find the subject fascinating. I like to read about concepts and mathematicians.” GivingLooksDifferentFunSubjectsMaterialsInternetConceptsAccessFascinatingMathematicianTopicsWikipedia Author:Viswanathan Anand
“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.” LittlesLongMomentsTurnsSidesMemoriesGenerationsSubjectsStyleDrinkScientistSorryExtremesCreditEveningThickMathematicianProbabilityWrathHandfulAvoidedPortYounger GenerationBoilingCambridgeInverseCauldronsCherished Memories Author:Fred Hoyle
“The total subject of mathematics is clearly too broad for any of us. I do not think that any mathematician since Gauss has covered it uniformly and fully; even Hilbert did not and all of us are of considerably lesser width quite apart from the question of depth than Hilbert.” ThinkingSubjectsMathematicsDepthBroadsCoveredMathematicianWidth Author:John von Neumann