Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society (1947)
Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician
Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 346
Context: Fermat applied his method of tangents to many difficult problems. The method has the form of the now-standard method of differential calculus, though it begs entirely the difficult theory of limits.
Duncan Gregory (1813–1844) British mathematician
Source: Examples of the processes of the differential and integral calculus, (1841), p. 237; Lead paragraph of Ch. XV, On General Theorems in the Differential Calculus,; Cited in: James Gasser (2000) A Boole Anthology: Recent and Classical Studies in the Logic of George Boole,, p. 52
Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)
Advertisement, pp.3-4
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)
“The girl I find who wants to talk about quantum theory in a bar is the one I want to marry.”
Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist
Rolling Stone, on his “ideal” soulmate
John Polkinghorne (1930) physicist and priest
Divine Action: An Interview with John Polkinghorne http://www.aril.org/polkinghorne.htm by Lyndon F. Harris in Cross Currents, Spring 1998, Vol. 48 Issue 1.
Shiraz Minwalla (1972) Indian physicist
Interview in The Hindu (2013)
Context: The improved understanding of the equations of hydrodynamics is general in nature; it applies to all quantum field theories, including those like quantum chromodynamics that are of interest to real world experiments. I think this is a good (though minor) example of the impact of string theory on experiments. At our current stage of understanding of string theory, we can effectively do calculations only in particularly simple — particularly symmetric — theories. But we are able to analyse these theories very completely; do the calculations completely correctly. We can then use these calculations to test various general predictions about the behaviour of all quantum field theories. These expectations sometimes turn out to be incorrect. With the string calculations to guide you can then correct these predictions. The corrected general expectations then apply to all quantum field theories, not just those very symmetric ones that string theory is able to analyse in detail.
Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist
"Testing Quantum Mechanics" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0003491689902765, Annals of Physics (1989)
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Response to being shown a "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" column with the headline "Greatest Living Mathematician Failed in Mathematics" in 1935. Quoted in Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson (2007), p. 16 http://books.google.com/books?id=cdxWNE7NY6QC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA16#v=onepage&q&f=false <br class="br">1930s
“To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent.”
Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator
Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist
"Loop Quantum Gravity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)
