"It always seems to me absurd to speak of a complete proof of a theorem being rigorously demonstrated. An incomplete proof is no proof and a mathematical truth not rigorously demonstrated is not demonstrated at all. I do not mean to deny that there are mathematical truths, morally certain, which defy and will probably to the end of time to defy proof, as, e.g. that every indecomposable integer polynomial function must represent an infinitude of primes. I have sometimes thought that the profound mystery which envelops our conceptions relative to prime numbers depends upon the limitation of our faculties in regard to time, which like space may be in its essence poly-dimensional, and that this and such sort of truths would become self-evident to a being whose mode of perception is according to superficially as distinguished from our own limitation to linearly extended time."
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Jews from the United KingdomMathematicians from EnglandPeople from LondonUniversity of Oxford facultyBusinesspeople from England
Original Language: English
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J. J. Sylvester. "On Certain Inequalities Relating to Prime Numbers", Nature, 38 (1888), 259–262.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Joseph_Sylvester
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James Joseph Sylvester
James Joseph Sylvester (3 September 1814 – 15 March 1897) was an English mathematician, and a leader in American mathematics in the second half of the 19th century.
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