David Mumford: Quotes about mathematics

David Mumford is American mathematician. Explore interesting quotes on mathematics.
David Mumford: 10   quotes 0   likes

“There is only one other survey, Datta and Singh’s 1938 History of Hindu Mathematics, recently reprinted but very hard to obtain in the West (I found a copy in a small specialized bookstore in Chennai). They describe in some detail the Indian work in arithmetic and algebra and, supplemented by the equally hard to find Geometry in Ancient and Medieval India by Sarasvati Amma (1979), one can get an overview of most topics.”

David Mumford

[David Mumford, Book Review, Notices of the AMS, March 2010, 57, 3, http://www.ams.org/notices/201003/rtx100300385p.pdf]

History , Mathematics

“I am accustomed, as a professional mathematician, to living in a sort of vacuum, surrounded by people who declare with an odd sort of pride that they are mathematically illiterate.”

David Mumford

David Mumford, cited in: Michael Harris (2015), Mathematics without Apologies: Portrait of a Problematic Vocation. p. 5

People , Mathematics

“In the winter of 2008, Jenifer and I visited Chennai Mathematical Institute. This remarkable Institute is the creation of Seshadri. It is a unique blend of an American style liberal arts college with traditional Indian guru one-on-one teaching, adding physics, computer science, history and music to its maths curriculum. Only in India could an intellectual with no business or management experience, who spends all his spare time singing classical south Indian music, have been the catalyst for such a unique educational experiment.”

David Mumford

[David Mumford, Passages to India, Mathematics Intelligencer, 2010, Hyderabad edition, 51-55, http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/beyond/papers/2010c--PassagesIndia-journal.pdf]

Education , Art , Music , History