|
|
Hardy, Godfrey H.
1877-1947. British mathematician.
"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."
"A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas."
"The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics."
A Mathematician's Apology, London, Cambridge University Press, 1941.
|
|