E. T. Bell
E. T. Bell
Eric Temple Bellwas a Scottish-born mathematician and science fiction writer who lived in the United States for most of his life. He published non-fiction using his given name and fiction as John Taine...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth7 February 1883
dangerous word
'Obvious' is the most dangerous word in mathematics.
art creative feeling fitness guided inspired mathematics prospect rather ultimate
Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness.
greater shall time
Time makes fools of us all. Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us.
future mathematics unresolved
The mistakes and unresolved difficulties of the past in mathematics have always been the opportunities of its future.
marks mathematics
It is the perennial youthfulness of mathematics itself which marks it off with a disconcerting immortality from the other sciences.
austere degenerate formulas incapable indeed neat pursuit quest quickly
The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular.
examine taught
Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.
absolute pretension science truth
Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth.
brief dozen half indeed papers presented
Out of fifty mathematical papers presented in brief at such a meeting, it is a rare mathematician indeed who really understands what more than half a dozen are about.
hated machine understood
I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly.