"At the beginning of this century a self-destructive democratic principle was advanced in mathematics (especially by Hilbert), according to which all axiom systems have equal right to be analyzed, and the value of a mathematical achievement is determined, not by its significance and usefulness as in other sciences, but by its difficulty alone, as in mountaineering. This principle quickly led mathematicians to break from physics and to separate from all other sciences. In the eyes of all normal people, they were transformed into a sinister priestly caste . . . Bizarre questions like Fermat's problem or problems on sums of prime numbers were elevated to supposedly central problems of mathematics."
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Mathematicians from RussiaMathematicians from the Soviet UnionJews from RussiaPeople from OdesaWolf Prize in Mathematics laureates
Original Language: English
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"Will Mathematics Survive? Report on the Zurich Congress" in The Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol. 17, no. 3 (1995), pp. 6–10.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Vladimir_Arnold
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Vladimir Arnold
Vladimir Igorevich Arnold (alternative spelling Arnol'd, Russian: Влади́мир И́горевич Арно́льд, 12 June 1937 – 3 June 2010) was a Russian mathematician famous for his work on the KAM theorem regarding the stability of integrable systems, who made important contributions in dynamical systems theory, catastrophe theory, topology, algebraic geometry, symplectic geometry, differential equations, classical mechanics and singularity theory.
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