Sophie Germain - Collected Quotes

"It appears that in everything the interest of ideas is in inverse proportion to the usefulness they have in practice. This is not surprising when we consider that the human intellect, when working for its own satisfaction, should encounter the greatest intellectual beauties rather than when guided by an external motive [...]" (Sophie Germain, [letter to Gauss] 1809)

"But by far the greatest obstacle to the progress of science and to the undertaking of new tasks and provinces therein is found in this: that men despair and think things impossible." (Sophie Germain, 1813)

"If a hypothesis contains all that is part of the problem, if it can be regarded as a true definition, it suffices to introduce this hypothesis into the calculus, in order to obtain all the analytical consequences that belong to the solution of the same problem."(Sophie Germain, 1821) 

"Let me be permitted to recall that the object of mathematics is not to investigate the causes that one can assign to natural phenomena. This science would lose both its character and credit if, renouncing the support of general well-confirmed facts, it sought within the realm of nebulous conjectures, a realm which has always been a fertile source of error for ways of satisfying the thirst fo rexplanation." (Sophie Germain, "Examen des principes qui peuvent conduire a la connaissance des lois de requilibre et du mouvement des solides elastiques", Annales de Chimie 38, 1828)

"The more one reflects, the more one acknowledges that necessity governs the world. At each new progress of science ,that which seemed contingent is recognized as being necessary. Multiple relations are established between the branches that we had thought to be separate; we observe laws where we had thought there were only accidental events. We approach more and more the unity of being […]" (Sophie Germain, "Considerations sur l’etat des sciences et lettres, aux differentes epoques de leur culture", 1833)

"Algebra is but written geometry and geometry is but figured algebra." (Sophie Germain, "Mémoire sur les Surfaces Élastiques", 1880)

"It matters little who first arrives at an idea, rather what is significant is how far that idea can go." (Sophie Germain)

"Space and time: these man proposes to measure. The one circumscribes his momentary existence, the other accompanies his successive stages in life. These two dimensions are tied together through a necessary relationship, namely, motion. When motion is constant and uniform, space is known by time and time is measured by space. Man has nothing within him that is constant and uniform; continually modified every instant. he is changing, irregular. and hardly durable enough to be a measure of duration." (Sophie Germain)