“The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s must be beautiful; the ideas like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.”
A Mathematician's Apology (1941)
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G. H. Hardy20
British mathematician 1877–1947Related quotes
Martin Gardner (1914–2010) recreational mathematician and philosopher
The Dover Math and Science Newsletter http://www.doverpublications.com/mathsci/0516/d/ May 16, 2011
Marston Morse (1892–1977) American mathematician
Attributed in Princeton & Mathematics: A Notable Record, Chaplin, Virginia, Princeton Alumni Weekly, May 9, 1958 http://www.princeton.edu/~mudd/finding_aids/mathoral/pmcxpaw.htm,
Vladimir I. Arnold (1937–2010) Russian mathematician
"On teaching mathematics", as translated by A. V. Goryunov, in Russian Mathematical Surveys Vol. 53, no. 1 (1998), p. 229–236.
Context: In the middle of the twentieth century it was attempted to divide physics and mathematics. The consequences turned out to be catastrophic. Whole generations of mathematicians grew up without knowing half of their science and, of course, in total ignorance of any other sciences. They first began teaching their ugly scholastic pseudo-mathematics to their students, then to schoolchildren (forgetting Hardy's warning that ugly mathematics has no permanent place under the Sun).
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)
"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)
Richard Courant (1888–1972) German American mathematician (1888-1972)
Richard Courant, "Mathematics in the Modern World", Scientific American, Vol 211, (Sep 1964), p. 42
“To find beauty in ugliness is the province of the poet.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet
Statement (5 August 1888), as quoted in The life of Thomas Hardy 1840-1928 (1962) by Florence Emily Hardy