Minkowski Quotes & Sayings

The rigid electron is in my view a monster in relation to Maxwell's equations, whose innermost harmony is the principle of relativity ... the rigid electron is no working hypothesis, but a working hindrance. Approaching Maxwell's equations with the concept of the rigid electron seems to me the same thing as going to a concert with your ears stopped up with cotton wool. We must admire the courage and the power of the school of the rigid electron which leaps across the widest mathematical hurdles with fabulous hypotheses, with the hope to land safely over there on experimental-physical ground. — Hermann Minkowski

Integers are the fountainhead of all mathematics. — Hermann Minkowski

The mathematical education of the young physicist [Albert Einstein] was not very solid, which I am in a good position to evaluate since he obtained it from me in Zurich some time ago. — Hermann Minkowski

Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality. — Hermann Minkowski

But had Minkowski and Einstein not recognized it long before us, our schizophrenic children would have taught us that space-time is a unity that precedes any separate understanding of either category; just as grasping this unity is a precondition for understanding causality. — Bruno Bettelheim

Oh, that Einstein, always skipping lectures ... I certainly never would have thought he could do it. — Hermann Minkowski

This has been done elegantly by Minkowski; but chalk is cheaper than grey matter, and we will do it as it comes. — Albert Einstein

Minkowski spacetime. — Arthur C. Clarke

Heaven is angered by my arrogance; my proof [of the four-color theorem] is also defective. — Hermann Minkowski