David Hilbert
David Hilbert
David Hilbertwas a German mathematician. He is recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many areas, including invariant theory and the axiomatization of geometry. He also formulated the theory of Hilbert spaces, one of the foundations of functional analysis...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth23 January 1862
CountryGermany
The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality
Every kind of science, if it has only reached a certain degree of maturity, automatically becomes a part of mathematics.
However unapproachable these problems may seem to us and however helpless we stand before them, we have, nevertheless, the firm conviction that their solution must follow by a finite number of purely logical processes.
We must know. We will know.
Some people have got a mental horizon of radius zero and call it their point of view.
Geometry is the most complete science.
As long as a branch of science offers an abundance of problems, so long it is alive; a lack of problems foreshadows extinction or the cessation of independent development.
Every mathematical discipline goes through three periods of development: the naive, the formal, and the critical.
The arithmetical symbols are written diagrams and the geometrical figures are graphic formulas.
An old French mathematician said: A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street. This clearness and ease of comprehension, here insisted on for a mathematical theory, I should still more demand for a mathematical problem if it is to be perfect; for what is clear and easily comprehended attracts, the complicated repels us.
Before beginning [to try to prove Fermat's Last Theorem] I should have to put in three years of intensive study, and I haven't that much time to squander on a probable failure.
I have tried to avoid long numerical computations, thereby following Riemann's postulate that proofs should be given through ideas and not voluminous computations.
Physics is much too hard for physicists.
How thoroughly it is ingrained in mathematical science that every real advance goes hand in hand with the invention of sharper tools and simpler methods which, at the same time, assist in understanding earlier theories and in casting aside some more complicated developments.