"I contributed; Ulam did not. I'm sorry I had to answer it in this abrupt way. Ulam was rightly dissatisfied with an old approach. He came to me with a part of an idea which I already had worked out and difficulty getting people to listen to. He was willing to sign a paper. When it then came to defending that paper and really putting work into it, he refused. He said, "I don't believe in it.""
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from the United StatesInventorsAgnostics from the United StatesAcademics from PolandMathematicians from Poland
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Stanislaw Ulam
StanisĆaw Marcin Ulam (April 13, 1909 â May 13, 1984) was a Polish-American mathematician who participated in the Manhattan Project and proposed the TellerâUlam design of thermonuclear weapons. He also invented nuclear pulse propulsion and developed a number of mathematical tools in number theory, set theory, ergodic theory, and algebraic topology.
38 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Stanislaw Ulam â
Related Quotes
"Thinking very hard about the same problem for several hours can produce a severe fatigue, close to a breakdown. I nevâŠ"
"For many years I was the youngest among my mathematical friends. It makes me melancholy to realize that I now have beâŠ"
"Ada came from LwĂłw. She was a very good looking girl who was studying mathematics at the University of Geneva. For a âŠ"
"It was not so much that I was doing mathematics, but rather that mathematics had taken possession of me."
"It is most important in creative science not to give up. If you are an optimist you will be willing to "try" more thaâŠ"
"The mathematicians know a great deal about very little and the physicists very little about a great deal."
"Whatever is worth saying, can be stated in fifty words or less."
"The first sign of senility is that a man forgets his theorems, the second sign is that he forgets to zip up, the thirâŠ"
"I'm an agnostic. Sometimes I muse deeply on the forces that are for me invisible. When I am almost close to the idea âŠ"
"I thought that the description of Don Quixote's fight with the windmills the funniest thing imaginable."