Gallery of Mathematicians
Below are some of the greatest mathematician that have lived. I would like to point out that out of the billions of people that have lived since 300 B.C.E. only a few (perhaps a few hundred as a overestimate) have been really outstanding mathematicians (meaning they have helped contribute to furthering the discipline and knowledge of mathematics in a meaningful way). Among those hundreds of outstanding mathematicians only a handful are considered to be the greats. So overall there is a very small percent that a outstanding person appears and there is less chance than that of a great mathematician appearing. This should give you a idea about how rare the circumstances needed to create such a person really are. But here are a few. Note that I don't have them here in any particular order. For a list of more see
The Greatest Mathematicians of All Time.
The Greatest Mathematicians of All Time.
Archimedes
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." |
Euclid
"The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God." |
J.C.F Gauss
"I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them." |
Leonhard Euler
"To those who ask what the infinitely small quantity in mathematics is, we answer that it is actually zero. Hence there are not so many mysteries hidden in this concept as they are usually believed to be." |
David Hilbert
"No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man; no other idea has so fruitfully stimulated his intellect; yet no other concept stands in greater need of clarification than that of the infinite." |
J.H. Poincare
"To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection." |
J.-L Lagrange
"As long as algebra and geometry have been separated, their progress have been slow and their uses limited; but when these two sciences have been united, they have lent each mutual forces, and have marched together towards perfection" |
G.F.B. Riemann
"If only I had the theorems! Then I should find the proofs easily enough". |
G.W. Leibniz
"Men act like brutes in so far as the sequences of their perceptions arise through the principle of memory only, like those empirical physicians who have mere practice without theory." |
P. Fermat
"And perhaps, posterity will thank me for having shown it that the ancients did not know everything." |
N.H. Abel
I don't have any quotes for Abel. But if you looked at the jokes in the Funny Plane section of this site you will have heard the one with Abel in it. |
E. Galiois
The genius of Galois was not recognized at that hallowed institution of learning. Eric Temple Bell, the famous historian of mathematics in his book “Men of Mathematics” quotes “People not fit to sharpen his (Galois’) pencils sat in judgement of him.” |