English Mathematician Quotes

Alfred North Whitehead

Edmond Halley

John Herschel

Ada Lovelace

George Boole

George Biddell Airy

Roger Penrose

The value of [pi] has engaged the attention of many mathematicians and calculators from the time of Archimedes to the present day, and has been computed from so many different formulae, that a complete account of its calculation would almost amount to a history of mathematics.

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher

For that my opinion doth differ from some of the ancient writers in natural Phylosophy, it is possible that it may be ytterly dislyked of and condemned to be of no trueth.

William Bourne (mathematician)

It would be rash to say that nothing remains for discovery or improvement even in the elements of mathematics; but it may be safely asserted that the ground has been so long and so thoroughly explored as to hold out little hope of profitable return for a casual adventurer.

Isaac Todhunter

A mere catalogue of facts, however well arranged has never led to any important scientific generalisation.

I should always call inventor him who first publishes, or at least communicates [the idea] to his friends.

We have reason to suspect that there are a great many more comets, which being at remote distances from the Sun, and being obscure and without a tail, may for that reason escape our observation.

The general phenomenon [total eclipse] is perhaps the most awfully grand which man can witness.

George Biddell Airy

Great mathematics is achieved by solving difficult problems not by fabricating elaborate theories in search of a problem.

Harold Davenport

I have had considerable experience in dealing with minds of low logical power, and have found that studies may be made so easy and mechanical as to render thought almost superfluous.

I have endeavour'd to make every thing so plain, that a very little Skill in Geometry may be sufficient to enable one to read this Book by himself. And upon this occasion I would advise all my Readers, who desire to make themselves Masters of this Subject, not to be contented with the Schemes they find here; but upon every Occasion to draw new ones of their own, in all the Variety of Circumstances they can think of. This will take up a little more Time at first; but in a little while they will find the vast Benefit of it, by the extensive Notions it will give them of the Nature of these Principles.

Man is what he is, because a spiritual element has entered into, and taken possession of, animal consciousness. This spiritual element is not, according to Christian teaching, divine: but it is capable of entering into relations with God. It can perceive Him: in thought, it can reason as to His nature and actions: in will and feeling, it can serve and love Him, or disobey and fear Him. Such activity shows itself in what we call the working of conscience.

To all of us who hold the Christian belief that God is truth, anything that is true is a fact about God, and mathematics is a branch of theology.

Hilda Phoebe Hudson

Very belatedly in 1947, Darwin [Sir Charles Darwin, great-grandson of the famous Charles Darwin] agreed to set up a very small electronics group [...] It was not easy to have the imagination to foresee that computers were to become one of the most important developments of the century.

James H. Wilkinson

Logic is the olive branch from the old to the young, the wand which in the hands of youth has the magic property of creating science.

Alfred North Whitehead

A beautiful idea has a much greater chance of being a correct idea than an ugly one.

Indeed we may consider the engine as the material and mechanical representative of analysis, and that our actual working powers in this department of human study will be enabled more effectually than heretofore to keep pace with our theoretical knowledge of its principles and laws, through the complete control which the engine gives us over the executive manipulation of algebraical and numerical symbols.

It hath been my Lot to live in a time, wherein have been many and great Changes and Alterations. It hath been my endeavour all along, to act by moderate Principles, between the Extremities on either hand, in a moderate compliance with the Powers in being, in those places, where it hath been my Lot to live, without the fierce and violent animosities usual in such Cases, against all, that did not act just as I did, knowing that there were many worthy Persons engaged on either side. And willing whatever side was upmost, to promote (as I was able) any good design for the true Interest of Religion, of Learning, and the publick good; and ready so to do good Offices, as there was Opportunity; And, if things could not be just, as I could wish, to make the best of what is: And hereby, (thro' God's gracious Providence) have been able to live easy, and useful, though not Great.

Metrical geometry is thus a part of descriptive geometry, and descriptive geometry is all geometry.

The most accomplished in the use of symbols must sometimes throw aside his abstractions and resort to homelier methods for trial and verification - not doubting, in so doing, the truth which lies at the bottom of his symbolism, but distrusting his own powers.

If science may be vilified by representing it as opposed to religion, or trammeled by mistaken notions of the danger of free enquiry, there is yet another mode by which it may be degraded from its native dignity, and that is by placing it in the light of a mere appendage to and caterer for our pampered appetites.

Perhaps I may without immodesty lay claim to the appellation of Mathematical Adam, as I believe that I have given more names (passed into general circulation) of the creatures of the mathematical reason than all the other mathematicians of the age combined.

James Joseph Sylvester

It may have occurred (and very naturally too) to such as have had the curiosity to read the title of this lecture, that it must necessarily be a very dry and difficult subject; interesting to very few, intelligible to still fewer, and, above all, utterly incapable of adequate treatment within the limits of a discourse like this.

William Kingdon Clifford

The referee said it was not acceptable, but the Press considered they could not refuse to publish a book by a professor of the university.

John Edensor Littlewood

The right to live does not connote the right of each man to reproduce his kind... As we lessen the stringency of natural selection, and more and more of the weaklings and the unfit survive, we must increase the standard, mental and physical, of parentage.

To history we shall adhere no farther, than is sufficient to preserve an unbroken series of methods gradually becoming more exact and extensive; the series beginning with the first rude, though perfectly just, method of James Bernoulli, and ending with Lagrange's exquisite and refined Calculus of Variations.

Robert Woodhouse