"It is with Bernhard Riemann's work that we finally have the mathematical glasses to explore such worlds of the mind. And now my journey through the abstract world of 20th century mathematics has revealed that maths is the true language that the universe is written in. They key to understanding the world around us. Mathematicians aren't motivated by money and material gain, or even by practical applications of their work. For us it's the glory of solving one of the great unsolved problems that have outwitted previous generations of mathematicians. David Hilbert was right; it’s the unsolved problems of mathematics which make it a living subject. Which obsess each new generation of mathematicians. Despite all the things we've discovered over the last 7 millennia, there are still many things we don't understand. And its Hilbert’s call of "We must know, we will know" which drives mathematics."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Fellows of the Royal SocietyMathematicians from EnglandPeople from LondonUniversity of Oxford alumni
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Conclusion in BBC's The Story of Maths, episode 4
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marcus_du_Sautoy
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Marcus du Sautoy
3 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Marcus du Sautoy →
Related Quotes
"Five hundred years ago, when faced with an eclipse, many of us would have believed it was the work of an angry god. B…"
"I would teach the world how the Greeks proved, more than 2,000 years ago, that there are infinitely many prime number…"
"I never really had any aspirations to be an actor when I was young. I wanted to play the piano in a bar, to be the ol…"
"If I do decide one day to stop acting, I just hate the idea of people going: 'Oh, did you ever do anything else besid…"
"I don't really know how to act, I kind of wanted to somehow make it real, and one of the ways I've always thought mak…"
"In the days of my early acquaintance with Henley, some fourteen or fifteen years ago, I could never look at him witho…"
"When men live in small communities, ... they cannot avoid personal participation in some public functions. So it was …"
"It is impossible to maintain that these attributes [caution and progress] have been constant in the two great English…"
"The twentieth century had conclusively settled the question of how a society should be organised: liberal democracy, …"
"For James, there was no sense that expanding Tesco’s sales onto the web was what the human race urgently needed. It d…"