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Ronald Graham
(31 Oct 1935 - )
American mathematician and computer scientist known for his contributions to discrete mathematics, scheduling theory, computational geometry, Ramsey theory, and quasi-randomness. He spent 37 years at Bell Labs and AT&T, retiring as Director of Information Sciences in 1999.
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Science Quotes by Ronald Graham (6 quotes)
As far as counting goes, it is said there are three kinds of people: The first kind are those who CAN count; the second kind are those who can't.
— Ronald Graham
With cartoon, in Nicholas Rose, Mathematical Maxims and Minims.
How do you find enough time to do all the things you want to do? Well, there are 24 hours in every day… And, if that’s not enough, you’ve always got the nights.
— Ronald Graham
With cartoon, in Nicholas Rose, Mathematical Maxims and Minims.
It would be very discouraging if somewhere down the line you could ask a computer if the Riemann hypothesis is correct and it said, “Yes, it is true, but you won’t be able to understand the proof.”
— Ronald Graham
As quoted in John Horgan, 'The Death of Proof', Scientific American (Oct 1993), 269, No. 4, 103.
Our brains have evolved to get us out of the rain, find where the berries are, and keep us from getting killed. Our brains did not evolve to help us grasp really large numbers or to look a things in a hundred thousand dimensions.
— Ronald Graham
As quoted by Paul Hoffman, 'The Man Who Loves Only Numbers', The Atlantic (Nov 1987), 260, No. 5, 74. Also quoted in Clifford Pickover, 'Preface', Wonders of Numbers: Adventures in Mathematics, Mind and Meaning (2000), x.
The problem with juggling is that the balls go where you throw them. Just as the problem with programming is that the computer does exactly what you tell it.
— Ronald Graham
[On parallels between juggling and computing.] With cartoon, in Nicholas Rose, Mathematical Maxims and Minims.
The trouble with the integers is that we have examined only the small ones. Maybe all the exciting stuff happens at really big numbers, ones we can’t get our hands on or even begin to think about in any very definite way. So maybe all the action is really inaccessible and we’re just fiddling around.
— Ronald Graham
As quoted by Paul Hoffman, 'The Man Who Loves Only Numbers', The Atlantic (Nov 1987), 260, No. 5, 74. Also quoted in Clifford Pickover, 'Preface', Wonders of Numbers: Adventures in Mathematics, Mind and Meaning (2000), x.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
