From a book review in The New York Times (9 May 1976) http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40F13FC345E157493CBA9178ED85F428785F9#, also quoted in The American Mathematical Monthly (December 1994)
Context: Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals — the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all.
“A scientist worthy of the name, above all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impression as an artist; his pleasure is as great and of the same nature.”
"Notice sur Halphen," Journal de l'École Polytechnique (Paris, 1890), 60ème cahier, p. 143. See also Tobias Dantzig, Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954) p. 8
Context: A scientist worthy of the name, above all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impression as an artist; his pleasure is as great and of the same nature.... we work not only to obtain the positive results which, according to the profane, constitute our one and only affection, as to experience this esthetic emotion and to convey it to others who are capable of experiencing it.
Original
Le savant digne de ce nom, le géomètre surtout, éprouve en face de son œuvre la même impression que l'artiste ; sa jouissance est aussi grande et de même nature.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Henri Poincaré 49
French mathematician, physicist, engineer, and philosopher … 1854–1912Related quotes
Source: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972) (1989), p. 2, footnote 4.
Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1969) http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1969/delbruck-lecture.html
Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 77-78
On a meeting with a young artist, Mr. J. B. Kidd, Ch. X, p. 140
The Life and Adventures of John James Audubon, the Naturalist (1868)
The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements (1908)
Quote from a speech of Ferdinand Hodler: 'The artist's mission' (held in Freibourg in 1897), first published in 1923 in Zurich; as cited by Paul Westheim in Confessions of Artists - Letters, Memoirs and Observations of Contemporary Artists, Propyläen Publishing House, Berlin, 1925
Newsnight 30th March 2011
Source: BBC iplayer, 37 mins online http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0101g7l/Newsnight_30_03_2011/