Laurent Schwartz citations

Laurent Schwartz est un mathématicien français, né le 5 mars 1915 à Paris où il est mort le 4 juillet 2002.

Il est le premier Français à obtenir la médaille Fields, en 1950 pour ses travaux sur la théorie des distributions. Professeur emblématique à l'École polytechnique de 1959 à 1980, membre de l'Académie des sciences et intellectuel engagé, il s'est distingué par ses nombreux combats politiques. Wikipedia  

✵ 5. mars 1915 – 4. juillet 2002
Laurent Schwartz: 4   citations 0   J'aime

Laurent Schwartz: Citations en anglais

“What is important is to deeply understand things and their relations to each other. This is where intelligence lies. The fact of being quick or slow isn't really relevant.”

A Mathematician Grappling With His Century (2001). Quoted in slide no.22 https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/events/materials/elgw-boaler-ppt.pdf
Contexte: I was always deeply uncertain about my own intellectual capacity; I thought I was unintelligent. And it is true that I was, and still am, rather slow. I need time to seize things because I always need to understand them fully. Even when I was the first to answer the teacher's questions, I knew it was because they happened to be questions to which I already knew the answer. But if a new question arose, usually students who weren't as good as I was answered before me. Towards the end of the eleventh grade, I secretly thought of myself as stupid. I worried about this for a long time. Not only did I believe I was stupid, but I couldn't understand the contradiction between this stupidity and my good grades. I never talked about this to anyone, but I always felt convinced that my imposture would someday be revealed: the whole world and myself would finally see that what looked like intelligence was really just an illusion. If this ever happened, apparently no one noticed it, and I’m still just as slow. (...)At the end of the eleventh grade, I took the measure of the situation, and came to the conclusion that rapidity doesn't have a precise relation to intelligence. What is important is to deeply understand things and their relations to each other. This is where intelligence lies. The fact of being quick or slow isn't really relevant. Naturally, it's helpful to be quick, like it is to have a good memory. But it's neither necessary nor sufficient for intellectual success.

“I have always thought that morality in politics was something essential, just like feelings and affinities.”

As quoted in his obituary in The Times (July 2002) http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Obits/Schwartz.html

“To discover something in mathematics is to overcome an inhibition and a tradition. You cannot move forward if you are not subversive.”

Laurent Schwartz livre A Mathematician Grappling with His Century

Un mathematicien aux prises avec le siecle (1997)

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