A Quote by Robert Kanigel

Plenty of mathematicians, Hardy knew, could follow a step-by-step discursus unflaggingly-yet counted for nothing beside Ramanujan. Years later, he would contrive an informal scale of natural mathematical ability on which he assigned himself a 25 and Littlewood a 30. To David Hilbert, the most eminent mathematician of the day, he assigned an 80. To Ramanujan he gave 100.

Robert Kanigel

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Ability Assigned Beside Could Counted David Day Eminent Follow Gave Hardy Himself Informal Knew Later Mathematical Mathematician Mathematicians Most Natural Nothing Plenty Ramanujan Scale Step Which Would Years

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Robert Kanigel
American - Author
Born: May 28, 1946

The seeds from Ramanujan's garden have been blowing on the wind and have been sprouting all over the landscape. [On the stimulating effects of Ramanujan's mathematical legacy.]

Freeman Dyson

... each of the 24 modes in the Ramanujan function corresponds to a physical vibration of a string. Whenever the string executes its complex motions in space-time by splitting and recombining, a large number of highly sophisticated mathematical identities must be satisfied. These are precisely the mathematical identities discovered by Ramanujan.

Michio Kaku

Sometimes in studying Ramanujan's work, [George Andrews] said at another time, "I have wondered how much Ramanujan could have done if he had had MACSYMA or SCRATCHPAD or some other symbolic algebra package."

Robert Kanigel

I sort of half read Thomas Hardy's 'The Mayor of Casterbridge.' It was assigned in 10th grade, and I just couldn't get into it. About seven years later, I rediscovered Hardy and consumed four of his novels in a row.

Suzanne Collins

I read in the proof sheets of Hardy on Ramanujan: "As someone said, each of the positive integers was one of his personal friends." My reaction was, "I wonder who said that; I wish I had." In the next proof-sheets I read (what now stands), "It was Littlewood who said..."

John Edensor Littlewood

There is great exhilaration in breaking one of these things. ... Ramanujan gives no hints, no proof of his formulas, so everything you do you feel is your own.[About verifying Ramanujan's equations in a newly found manuscript.]

George Andrews

No mathematician should ever allow him to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game. ... Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who have done great work later; ... [but] I do not know of a single instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty. ... A mathematician may still be competent enough at sixty, but it is useless to expect him to have original ideas.

G. H. Hardy

The most remarkable feature about the magnitude scale was that it worked at all and that it could be extended on a worldwide basis. It was originally envisaged as a rather rough-and-ready procedure by which we could grade earthquakes. We would have been happy if we could have assigned just three categories, large, medium, and small; the point is, we wanted to avoid personal judgments. It actually turned out to be quite a finely tuned scale.

Charles Francis Richter

An axiomatic system establishes a reverberating relationship between what a mathematician assumes (the axioms) and what he or she can derive (the theorems). In the best of circumstances, the relationship is clear enough so that the mathematician can submit his or her reasoning to an informal checklist, passing from step to step with the easy confidence the steps are small enough so that he cannot be embarrassed nor she tripped up.

David Berlinski

The art of Navigation demonstrates how, by the shortest good way, by the aptest direction, and in the shortest time, a sufficient ship, between any two places (in passage navigable) assigned, may be conducted; and in all storms and natural disturbances chancing, how to use the best possible means, whereby to recover the place first assigned. Mathematical Preface

John Dee

Let everybody know this. He shall be assigned to the place and to the service to which he gave and devoted himself in this life and he can be sure that in eternity he will have as his lot the service and the companionship which he preferred in this life. This is what the Lord means when He says, 'If anyone is my servant let him follow Me and where I am he will be there as my servant' (Jn. 12:26).

John Cassian

Each day is a step we make towards eternity and we shall continue thus to step from day to day until we take the last step, which will bring us into the presence of God.

Catherine McAuley

A swami may conceivably follow only the path of dry reasoning, of cold renunciation; but a yogi engages himself in a definite, step-by-step procedure by which the body and mind are disciplined, and the soul liberated.

Paramahansa Yogananda

If P=NP, then the world would be a profoundly different place than we usually assume it to be. There would be no special value in “creative leaps,” no fundamental gap between solving a problem and recognizing the solution once it's found. Everyone who could appreciate a symphony would be Mozart; everyone who could follow a step-by-step argument would be Gauss; everyone who could recognize a good investment strategy would be Warren Buffett.

Scott Aaronson

Step 4: Cough and gag. Step 5: Repeat Step 4 until it feels like maybe your lungs aren't inside your body anymore. Step 6: Remember that a really cute boy is beside you, so try to cough in a far more attractive manner.

Ally Carter

I knew a lot of black scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, and female mathematicians and engineers, women of all backgrounds. So this idea that anyone could be an engineer, a mathematician, or whatever, was something that I had grown up with and thought was really normal.

Margot Lee Shetterly

A Quote by Robert Kanigel

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