"I discovered the works of Euler and my perception of the nature of mathematics underwent a dramatic transformation. I was de-Bourbakized, stopped believing in sets, and was expelled from the Cantorian paradise. I still believe in abstraction, but now I know that one ends with abstraction, not starts with it. I learned that one has to adapt abstractions to reality and not the other way around. Mathematics stopped being a science of theories but reappeared to me as a science of numbers and shapes."
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Academics from SwitzerlandPhysicists from SwitzerlandMathematicians from SwitzerlandAstronomers from SwitzerlandLogicians
Original Language: English
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Alexander Stepanov, in "Bjarne Stroustrup: Evolving a language in and for the real world: C++ 1991-2006" in ACM HOPL-III (June 2007)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leonhard_Euler
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Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler (15 April 1707 – 18 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician, and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in many other branches of mathematics such as analytic number theory, complex analysis, and infinitesimal calculus. He introduced much of modern mathematical terminology and notation, including the notion of a mathematical function. He is also known for
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