#mathematician

Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself. ↗

— Arthur Eddington

#himself #idol #mathematician #proof #pure

Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules... Mathematicians are more like classical composers. ↗

— Brian Greene

#bend #classical #classical composers #composers #like

Mathematics are the result of mysterious powers which no one understands, and which the unconscious recognition of beauty must play an important part. Out of an infinity of designs a mathematician chooses one pattern for beauty's sake and pulls it down to earth. ↗

— Marston Morse

#chooses #designs #down #down to earth #earth

I had changed from being a mathematician to a practicing scientist. I was increasingly embarassed that I could no longer follow some of the more modern branches of pure mathematics. ↗

— John Pople

#branches #changed #could #follow #had

Mathematicians aren't satisfied because they know there are no solutions up to four million or four billion, they really want to know that there are no solutions up to infinity. ↗

— Andrew Wiles

#billion #four #infinity #know #mathematicians

RAND scientists tried to tell their wives that the decision whether to buy or not to buy a washing machine was an 'optimization problem'. ↗

— Sylvia Nasar

#beauty

It might seem that the empirical philosopher is the slave of his material, but that the pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#mathematician #music #musician #philosopher #philosophy