Richard Courant quotes
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“Euler - The unsurpassed master of analytic invention.”
-- Richard CourantSource : Richard Courant (1948). “Lectures on the theory of functions”
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“Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality. Though different traditions may emphasize different aspects, it is only the interplay of these antithetic forces and the struggle for their synthesis that constitute the life, usefulness, and supreme value of mathematical science.”
-- Richard Courant -
“It becomes the urgent duty of mathematicians, therefore, to meditate about the essence of mathematics, its motivations and goals and the ideas that must bind divergent interests together.”
-- Richard CourantSource : "Mathematics in the Modern World". Scientific American, Vol 211, (p. 42), September 1964.
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“For scholars and laymen alike it is not philosophy but active experience in mathematics itself that can alone answer the question: What is mathematics?”
-- Richard CourantSource : "What is Mathematics?" by Richard Courant, (p. xix), 1941.
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“With an absurd oversimplification, the 'invention' of the calculus is sometimes ascribed to two men, Newton and Leibniz. In reality, the calculus is the product of a long evolution that was neither initiated nor terminated by Newton and Leibniz, but in which both played a decisive part.”
-- Richard Courant -
“Starting in the seventeenth century, the general theory of extreme values - maxima and minima - has become one of the systematic integrating principles of science.”
-- Richard CourantSource : Richard Courant, Herbert Robbins (1979). “What is mathematics?: an elementary approach to ideas and methods”, Oxford University Press, USA
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“Calculus is the outcome of a dramatic intellectual struggle which has lasted for twenty-five hundred years.”
-- Richard Courant -
“With an absurd oversimplification, the "invention" of calculus [method in mathematics] is sometimes ascribed to two men, Newton and Leibniz.”
-- Richard Courant -
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“Oft in dreams invention we bestow to change a flounce or add a furbelow.”
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“In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.”
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“Fairy tales only happen in movies." -George Melies from The Invention of Hugo Cabret”
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Source : Algernon SIDNEY, Isaac Littlebury (1704). “Discourses concerning Government ... Published by I. Littlebury from an original manuscript of the author”, p.20
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“The greatest problem for mathematicians now is probably the Riemann Hypothesis.”
Source : "Andrew Wiles on Solving Fermat". The NOVA Interview, www.pbs.org. November 1, 2000.
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“Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations between objects.”
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