Pure Mathematician Quotes & Sayings

I thought of computers as very low class. I thought of myself as a pure mathematician and was interested in partial differential equations and topology and things like that. — Whitfield Diffie

If he would just work with pure ideas like a proper mathematician he could go as fast as thought. As it happens, Alan has become fascinated by the incarnations of pure ideas in the physical world. The underlying math of the universe is like the light streaming in through the window. Alan is not satisfied with merely knowing that it streams in. He blows smoke into the air to make the light visible. He sits in meadows gazing at pine cones and flowers, tracing the mathematical patterns in their structure, and he dreams about electron winds blowing over the glowing filaments and screens of radio tubes, and, in their surges and eddies, capturing something of what is going on in his own brain. Turing is neither a mortal nor a god. He is Antaeus. That he bridges the mathematical and physical worlds is his strength and his weakness. — Neal Stephenson

I am exclusively occupied with the problem of gravitation and hope with the help of a local mathematician friend [Marcel Grossman] to overcome all the difficulties. One thing is certain, however, that never in life have I been quite so tormented. A great respect for mathematics has been instilled within me, the subtler aspects of which, in my stupidity, I regarded until now as pure luxury. — Albert Einstein

I must admit that outside the university, it is difficult to be a pure mathematician. No one in my family understands what I do. My neighbors wonder why I spend all my time in my study scribbling with pencil on a yellow pad of paper instead of going outside to mow the lawn. — Isadore Singer

Even in the realm of pure mathematics, the mathematician may use any set of symbols he desires within any given region of space-time; he may even go so far as to maintain that any one set of symbols fits the scheme as well as any other, but to erect this method into a philosophy and confuse independence of any one special meaning with independence of all meaning is unjustified and unwarranted. — Fulton J. Sheen

The concept of an independent system is a pure creation of the imagination. For no material system is or can ever be perfectly isolated from the rest of the world. Nevertheless it completes the mathematician's "blank form of a universe" without which his investigations are impossible. It enables him to introduce into his geometrical space, not only masses and configurations, but also physical structure and chemical composition. Just as Newton first conclusively showed that this is a world of masses, so Willard Gibbs first revealed it as a world of systems. — Lawrence Joseph Henderson

The mathematician does not study pure mathematics because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it and he delights in it because it is beautiful. — Jules Henri Poincare

From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician. — James Jeans

The first successes were such that one might suppose all the difficulties of science overcome in advance, and believe that the mathematician, without being longer occupied in the elaboration of pure mathematics, could turn his thoughts exclusively to the study of natural laws. — Joseph Louis Francois Bertrand

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

Proof is the idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

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

Relations between pure and applied mathematicians are based on trust and understanding.
Namely, pure mathematicians do not trust applied mathematicians, and applied mathematicians do not understand pure mathematicians. — Albert Einstein

I didn't want to become a pure mathematician, as a matter of fact, my uncle was one, so I knew what the pure mathematician was and I did not want to be a pure - I wanted to do something different. — Benoit Mandelbrot

It is a pleasant surprise to him (the pure mathematician) and an added problem if he finds that the arts can use his calculations, or that the senses can verify them, much as if a composer found that sailors could heave better when singing his songs. — George Santayana

On completing my degree, I started a Ph.D. in statistics, although I knew very little about the topic. My supervisor was Professor Harry Pitt, who was an excellent pure mathematician and probabilist. — Clive Granger

... That little narrative is an example of the mathematician's art: asking simple and elegant questions about our imaginary creations, and crafting satisfying and beautiful explanations. There is really nothing else quite like this realm of pure idea; it's fascinating, it's fun, and it's free! — Paul Lockhart