"[For an unproved Lemma] I had what looked like a promising idea for this, but it was fallacious. In the middle of a three week holiday - mathematics completely below the horizon - the idea came again out of the blue when I was in bed. I forgot it had been rejected as fallacious, and this forgetting did the trick; because this time I noticed that it did prove something, and, by what was nearly, or quite, automatic writing, a proof got written down which deduced the Lemma from the something. ... I did experience automatic writing again. ... my pencil wrote down the formula [omitted] for no reason at all, and almost unattended by consciousness. On the face of it the formula has no apparent connexion with the problem, but it turns out to be an essential key to the proof. ... as if my subconsciousness knew the thing all the time, and finally got impatient."
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University of Cambridge alumniFellows of the Royal SocietyUniversity of Cambridge facultyMathematicians from England
Original Language: English
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p. 145-146
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Edensor_Littlewood
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John Edensor Littlewood
John Edensor Littlewood (9 June 1885 – 6 September 1977) was a British mathematician, known for his work on mathematical analysis. He had a long collaboration with G. H. Hardy.
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