20th-century Mathematician Quotes

Everybody knows that mathematics is about Miracles, only mathematicians have a name for them: Theorems.

I am always surprised when a young man tells me he wants to work at cosmology; I think of cosmology as something that happens to one, not something one can choose.

The Riemann Hypothesis (RH) has been around for more than 140 years, and yet now is arguably the most exciting time in its history to be working on RH. Recent years have seen an explosion of research stemming from the confluence of several areas of mathematics and physics.

Three shifts can be detected over time in the understanding of mathematics itself. One is a shift from completeness to incompleteness, another from certainty to conjecture, and a third from absolutism to relativity.

In retrospect all great ideas take on a certain simplicity and inevitability, partly because they shape the whole subsequent development of the subject.

Any applied mathematicians — any engineer using mathematics — works sometimes more and sometimes less mathematically. When he is most mathematical he makes least appeal to experience.

Chandler Davis
Chandler Davis
It is a paradox in mathematics and physics that we have no good model for the teaching of models.

There is an explicit way to define what explicit is.

Noga Alon
Noga Alon
In dealing with academics, it is absolutely superb to be able to say you're a mathematician! Nobody dares to say mathematics is not important or not significant... No discipline surpasses mathematics in pure academic prestige.

A quadratic function, ambitious, Said, "It's not only wrong, but it vicious. It's surely no sin To have max. and min.; To limit me so is malicious."

Mathematicians makes natural questions precise.

Richard E. Bellman
Richard E. Bellman
Science is reasoning; reasoning is mathematics; and, therefore, science is mathematics.

The unity of mathematics... is often invoked in a rather imprecise way.

Proof, being the highest level of reproduction activity, has an important interiorization aspect: as Yuri Manin stresses in his book Provable and Unprovable, a proof becomes such only after it is accepted (as the result of a highly rigorous process)... Manin describes the act of acceptance as a social act; however, the importance of its personal, psychological component can hardly be overestimated.

Seismology has lifted our notions about the interior of our planet from the realm of wild speculation to the stage of scientific measurement and well-reasoned inferences.

Our brains are just not wired to do probability problems very well.

Persi Diaconis
Persi Diaconis
In the fall of 1972 President Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a sitting president used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection.

Mathematics abounds in bright ideas. No matter how long and hard one pursues her, mathematics never seems to run out of exciting surprises. And by no means are these gems to be found only in difficult work at an advanced level. All kinds of simple notions are full of ingenuity.

Physics and geometry are one family. Together and holding hands they roam to the limits of outer space... Surprisingly, Math has earned its rightful place for man and in the sky; Fondling flowers with a smile — just wish nothing is said!

Shiing-Shen Chern
Shiing-Shen Chern
Mathematics is the product of real flesh-and-blood human beings whose lives may reflect the inspiration, the tragic, or the bizarre.

Immorality does not consist in being different. It consists in not allowing others to be so.

Shakuntala Devi
Shakuntala Devi
Concentrate only on the achievements, and ignore the mistakes. When judging a mathematician you should only integrate f+ and ignore the negative part. Perhaps this should apply more generally to all evaluations of your fellow men.

Antoni Zygmund
Antoni Zygmund
Mathematics is a vast adventure of ideas; its history reflects some of the noblest thoughts of countless generations.

There is hidden order in Nature, to be found only by patient search.

Garrett Birkhoff
Garrett Birkhoff
Although the prime numbers are rigidly determined, they somehow feel like experimental data.