Julian Coolidge Quotes

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Every writer must reconcile, as best he may, the conflicting claims of consistency and variety, of rigour in detail and elegance in the whole. The present author humbly confesses that, to him, geometry is nothing at all, if not a branch of art.

Julian Coolidge

But in the present century, thanks in good part to the influence of Hilbert, we have come to see that the unproved postulates with which we start are purely arbitrary. They must be consistent, they had better lead to something interesting.

Julian Coolidge

Julian Coolidge

Julian Coolidge

Born: September 28, 1873

Died: March 5, 1954 (aged 80)

Bio: Julian Lowell Coolidge was an American mathematician and a professor and chairman of the Harvard University Mathematics Department.

Known for:

A history of geometrical methods (1940)
A Treatise on Algebraic Plane Curves (1931)
A treatise on the circle and sphere (1916)
The mathematics of great amateurs (1949)
The elements of non-Euclidean geometry (1909)

Julian Coolidge on Wikipedia

Julian Coolidge works on Gutenberg Project

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