"The mathematician is perfect only in so far as he is a perfect man, in so far as he senses in himself the beauty of truth; only then will his work be thorough, transparent, prudent, pure, clear, graceful, indeed elegant." (Plato, "Republic", cca. 375 BC)
"A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections", 1833)
"[…] the mathematician is always walking upon the brink of a precipice, for, no matter how many theorems he deduces, he cannot tell that some contradiction will not await him in the infinity of consequences." (Richard A Arms, "The Notion of Number and the Notion of Class", 1917)
"A mathematician is a person who can find analogies between theorems; a better mathematician is one who can see analogies between proofs and the best mathematician can notice analogies between theories." (Stefan Banach, cca. 1930)
"A mathematician is not a man who can readily manipulate figures; often he cannot. He is not even a man who can readily perform the transformations of equations by the use of calculus. He is primarily an individual who is skilled in the use of symbolic logic on a high plane, and especially he is a man of intuitive judgment in the choice of the manipulative processes he employs." (Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think", 1945)
"The mathematician is not willing to give up his interest in these most beautiful accomplishments of his genius." (Eugene P Wigner, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences", Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics 13 (1), 1960)
"The mathematician is an artist whose medium is the mind and whose creations are ideas." (Hubert S Wall, "Creative Mathematics", 1963)
"Mathematicians are there to find the constraints and to eliminate those things that aren't constraints [...]" (Robert E Machol, Mathematicians are useful, 1971)
"Mathematicians are more like classical composers, typically working within a much tighter framework, reluctant to go to the next step until all previous ones have been established with due rigor." (Brian Greene, "The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory", 1999)
"Most mathematicians are happy to make use of those axioms in their proofs, although others do not, exploring instead so-called intuitionist logic or constructivist mathematics." (Gregory J Chaitin, "A century of controversy over the foundations of mathematics", 2000)
"[…] a mathematician is more anonymous than an artist." (Timothy Gowers, "Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction", 2002)
"[…] mathematicians are much more concerned for example with the structure behind something or with the whole edifice. Mathematicians are not really puzzlers." (Carlo Beenakker, [interview] 2006)
"[...] mathematicians are primarily problem solvers and theory builders, and answer first and foremost to the internal exigencies of their subject." (Jeremy Avigad, "Methodology and Metaphysics in the Development of Dedekind’s Theory of Ideals", 2006)
"Mathematicians are used to game-playing according to a set of rules they lay down in advance, despite the fact that nature always writes her own." (Philip W Anderson, "More and Different: Notes from a Thoughtful Curmudgeon", 2011)
"The mathematician is entirely free, within the limits of his imagination, to construct what worlds he pleases." (John W N Sullivan)
"The mathematician is the tamer who tamed infinity." (Lucian Blaga)
"The real mathematician is an enthusiast per se. ." (Friederich von Hardenberg [Novalis])
No comments:
Post a Comment