Quotes from Simon Singh

prove that xn + yn = zn has no whole number solutions for n greater than 2.

The fact that we have 7 days of the week can be traced to the Babylonian and Jewish civilisations, with the first documented reference dating to 600BC.

In fact, scientific results are a careful attempt to objectively measure reality, and although they may be refined over time, they are always our best hope of getting at the truth.

The worlds of maths and science have a long history of naming important objects after people.

Bearing in mind that homeopathic remedies are generally so diluted that they contain no active remedy, it seems obvious they can be nothing more than placebos.

Romantics might like to think of themselves as being composed of stardust. Cynics might prefer to think of themselves as nuclear waste.

All that was required to measure the planet was a man with a stick and a brain. In other words, couple an intellect with some experimental apparatus and almost anything seems achievable.

God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it.

Maths is one of the purest forms of thought, and to outsiders mathematicians may seem almost other-worldly.

A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.

Similarly, if you're trying to prove something mathematically, it's possible that no proof exists.

Proof is what lies at the heart of maths, and is what marks it out from other sciences. Other sciences have hypotheses that are tested against experimental evidence until they fail, and are overtaken by new hypotheses. In maths, absolute proof is the goal, and once something is proved, it is proved forever, with no room for change.

Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.

Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.

Scientific proof is inevitably fickle and shoddy. On the other hand mathematical proof is absolute and devoid of doubt.

The nineteenth-century mathematician Leopold Kronecker said, "God made the integers; all the rest is the work of man.

if N is large enough, it is virtually impossible to deduce p and q from N, and this is perhaps the most beautiful and elegant aspect of the RSA asymmetric cipher.

The NSA employs more mathematicians, buys more computer hardware, and intercepts more messages than any other organization in the world.

if a message protected by quantum cryptography were ever to be deciphered, it would mean that quantum theory is flawed

the enemy of security: repetition leads to patterns, and cryptanalysts thrive on patterns.

I had this very rare privilege of being able to pursue in my life what had been my childhood dream. I know it's a rare privilege, but if you can tackle something in adult life that means that much to you, then it's more rewarding than anything imaginable." - Andrew Wiles

Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple.

Martin Hellman:] Unless you're foolish enough to be continually excited, you won't have the motivation, you won't have the energy to carry it through.

like Turing and the cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park, the Navajo were ignored for decades. Eventually, in 1968, the Navajo code was declassified, and the following year the code talkers held their first reunion.