20th-century Mathematician Quotes

[The Riemann] zeros did not appear to be scattered at random. Riemann's calculations indicated that they were lining up as if along some mystical ley line running through the landscape.

Marcus du Sautoy

There are some current 'theories' that, when divested of begged questions, reduce to the non-controversial statement, 'Here are some facts and there may be some relation between them.'

Harold Jeffreys

If paparazzi specialized in mathematical celebrities they'd camp outside the dining hall at the IAS and come away with a new batch of pictures every day.

Cédric Villani

[The George E. P. Box paper Fitting empirical data (1960) is] a mature exposition of an important branch of statistics, to which the author has made great contributions. One feature of particular interest is practical discussion of genuinely nonlinear fitting problems and their solution with the help of tact and a special, publicly available, IBM-704 program. Another is insightful comments on the role of prior distributions in statistics.

Leonard Jimmie Savage

Every improvement or innovation begins with an idea. But an idea is only a possibility - a small beginning that must be nurtured, developed, engineer, tinkered with, championed, tested, implemented and checked ideas have no value until they are implemented.

John Alan Robinson

We see an ever-increasing move toward inter and trans- disciplinary attacks upon problems in the real world... The system scientist has a central role to play in this new order, and that role is to first of all understand ways and means of how to encode the natural world into "good" formal structures.

Every physicist knows exactly what the first and the second law mean, but... no two physicists agree about them.

Clifford Truesdell

There are mathematicians, and then there's the rest of the world, and not much interaction between the two.

William Thurston

One cannot guess the real difficulties of a problem before having solved it.

Carl Ludwig Siegel

Science is one aspect of God's presence, and scientists therefore part of the company of His heralds.

Charles Coulson

Yes, but when I discovered it, it stayed discovered.

Just as a lass may walk through the grass and, seeing no snakes, believe that there are no snakes, so also a student, may pass through elementary calculus and, seeing only elementary functions may for integrals, believe that each elementary function necessarily has an elementary function for an integral.

Ralph Palmer Agnew

Mathematics often owes more to those who ask questions than to those who answer them. The solution of a problem may stifle interest in the area around it. But "Fermat's Last Theorem", because it is not yet a theorem, has generated a great deal of "good" mathematics, whether goodness is judged by beauty, by depth or by applicability.

Mathematics is not constrained by mundane reality. It can build castles in the air and concepts in the mind whose beauty, magnificence, and intrigue are as boundless as the ideas themselves.

Michael Starbird

If you want to be a reference librarian, you must learn to overcome not only your shyness but also the shyness of others!

S. R. Ranganathan

Counting is a less precise tool for infinite sets than for finite ones. The shepherdess who can count her flock of a hundred sheep will know if the wolf has taken one; but, if she has an infinite flock, she won't notice until almost all of her sheep have been lost.

Peter Cameron (mathematician)

It seems certain that there is a limit to the amount of living mathematics that humanity can sustain at any time. As new mathematical specialties arise, old ones will have to be neglected.

I have often pondered over the roles of knowledge or experience, on the one hand, and imagination or intuition, on the other, in the process of discovery. I believe that there is a certain fundamental conflict between the two, and knowledge, by advocating caution, tends to inhibit the flight of imagination. Therefore, a certain naiveté, unburdened by conventional wisdom, can sometimes be a positive asset.

Ere long mathematics will be as useful to the chemist as the balance.

Marcel-Paul Schützenberger

Nature might be somehow more powerful than a digital computer.

Aviezri Fraenkel

I think we need more math majors who don't become mathematicians. More math major doctors, more math major high school teachers, more math major CEOs, more math major senators. But we won't get there unless we dump the stereotype that math is only worthwhile for kid geniuses.

Jordan Ellenberg

It seems to me highly improper to introduce God to solve our scientific problems.

William B. Bonnor

The dictum that everything that people do is "cultural" licenses the idea that every cultural critic can meaningfully analyze even the most intricate accomplishments of art and science... It is distinctly weird to listen to pronouncements on the nature of mathematics from the lips of someone who cannot tell you what a complex number is!

I disagree with Adler, who wrote (in the New Yorker) that there is no point in being a mathematician unless you can be a great mathematician. That's nonsense. Mathematics is like a Gothic cathedral. If you can build a little part of it, it is there - forever - in some sense. At least I have the illusion that it is so.

Consider the Pitiful Plight Of a runner who wasn't too bright, But sprinted so fast He vanished at last By red-shifting himself out of sight.

Ralph P. Boas Jr.