Quotes About Mathematics

The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought.

Do you believe in God? "I believe in the divine: Mendelssohn is divine. "I believe in grace: All natural movements are graceful. "I believe in the mystical mathematics of heaven, which is to say grace beyond the algorithm of causality." What about out-of-body experiences in those just returned from death's brink? "Hell, one has a vision of heaven all the time!

Teaching Ramanujan was like writing on a blackboard covered with excerpts from a more interesting lecture.

Arhitectura are un alt sens È™i alte scopuri decât doar de a scoate în eviden?? construcÈ›ia È™i de a r?spunde unor necesit??i. Arhitectura este arta prin excelen??, care atinge starea de m?reÈ›ie platonician?, de ordine matematic?, de speculaÈ›ie spiritual?, de percepere a armoniei prin raporturi emoÈ›ionale. Iat? scopul arhitecturii.

Some of its proponents like to say that string theory is a piece of twenty-first- century mathematics that has, by our good fortune, fallen into our hands in the twentieth century.

If infinities are signs of missing unification, a unified theory will have none. It will be what we call a finite theory, a theory that answers every question in terms of sensible finite numbers.

But Einstein was not the best mathematician around, and others, undeterred by neither the difficulty of the equations nor the war that was ravaging Europe (this was 1916), were able to find solutions. Some of the most important solutions ever found—those that describe the gravitational fields of stars and black holes—were written down by a German officer named Karl Schwarzchild as he lay dying in a field hospital of a skin disease he had picked up in the trenches.

We have to find a way to unfreeze time-to represent time without turning it into space. I have no idea how to do this. I can't conceive of a mathematics that doesn't represent a world as if it were frozen in eternity. It's terribly hard to represent time, and that's why there's a good chance that this representation is the missing piece.

Whatever we most admire and look up to—God, the truths of mathematics, the laws of nature—is endowed with an existence that transcends time. We act inside time but judge our actions by timeless standards. As a result of this paradox, we live in a state of alienation from what we most value. This alienation affects every one of our aspirations.

Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half.

Some mathematician has said pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in seeking it.

I know a rancher," says Grace. "When he was in his field with his cows, he counted one hundred and ninety-six. But when he rounded them up, he had two hundred.

Thinking of the hour as a consistent measure was not a familiar concept for most people, while the minute and second didn't exist as common units. (The division of the hour into 60 minutes and the minute into 60 seconds comes from the Babylonians, who used a base-60, or sexagecimal, system of counting for their astronomy. The ancient Greeks later adopted this and divided circular astronomical maps into 360 divisions, which were later transposed on to clock faces.)

algorithms.

This is a tricky domain because, unlike simple arithmetic, to solve a calculus problem - and in particular to perform integration - you have to be smart about which integration technique should be used: integration by partial fractions, integration by parts, and so on.

The infinite in mathematics is alway unruly unless it is properly treated.

Everyone knows what a curve is, until he has studied enough mathematics to become confused through the countless number of possible exceptions.

No matter how correct a mathematical theorem may appear to be, one ought never to be satisfied that there was not something imperfect about it until it also gives the impression of being beautiful.

My elementary education was at Christ Church infant school and St. Stephen's junior school. At St. Stephen's, I encountered my first real mentor, the headmaster Mr. Broakes. He must have spotted something unusual in me, for he spent lots of time encouraging my interest in mathematics.

A nation may be born in a day, but the great truths which make for the glory and uplift of the race only through long ages permeate and control humanity. We must have the divine patience and understand the divine mathematics of a thousand years as one day.

For me it remains an open question whether [this work] pertains to the realm of mathematics or to that of art.

Mathematics was hard, dull work, I thought; geography pleased me more. For my other studies, as well as for dancing, I was quite enthusiastic.

I didn't work especially hard at mathematics at school, because I knew that's what I'd be doing later.

A mathematician ... has no material to work with but ideas, and so his patterns are likely to last longer, since ideas wear less with time than words.