Henri Poincare
Henri Poincare
Jules Henri Poincaréwas a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and a philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as The Last Universalist by Eric Temple Bell, since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth29 April 1854
CountryFrance
math numbers feelings
...the feeling of mathematical beauty, of the harmony of numbers and of forms, of geometric elegance. It is a genuinely aesthetic feeling, which all mathematicians know
groups mathematics tales
All of mathematics is a tale about groups.
intuition logic prove-it
It is with logic that one proves; it is with intuition that one invents.
effort difficulty
But all of my efforts served only to make me better acquainted with the difficulty, which in itself was something.
mean pigs piano
Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means. The geometer might be replaced by the "logic piano" imagined by Stanley Jevons; or, if you choose, a machine might be imagined where the assumptions were put in at one end, while the theorems came out at the other, like the legendary Chicago machine where the pigs go in alive and come out transformed into hams and sausages. No more than these machines need the mathematician know what he does.
witty cat nerves
A cat is witty, he has nerve, he knows how to do precisely the right thing at the right moment.
two together progress
All great progress takes place when two sciences come together, and when their resemblance proclaims itself, despite the apparent disparity of their substance.
disease generations mathematics
Later generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has recovered.
beauty beautiful art
But for harmony beautiful to contemplate, science would not be worth following.
definitions philosopher logic
What is a good definition? For the philosopher or the scientist, it is a definition which applies to all the objects to be defined, and applies only to them; it is that which satisfies the rules of logic. But in education it is not that; it is one that can be understood by the pupils.
illumination long firsts
Most striking at first is the appearance of sudden illumination, a manifest sign of long unconscious prior work.
science causes chance
A very small cause, which escapes us, determines a considerable effect which we cannot ignore, and we say that this effect is due to chance.
differences errors finals
It may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena. A small error in the former will produce an enormous error in the later. Prediction becomes impossible, and we have the fortuitous phenomena.
life abstract entity
Talk with M. Hermite. He never evokes a concrete image, yet you soon perceive that the more abstract entities are to him like living creatures.