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Sir Harold Jeffreys
(22 Apr 1891 - 18 Mar 1989)
English astronomer, geophysicist and mathematician.
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Science Quotes by Sir Harold Jeffreys (5 quotes)
Nature does not consist entirely, or even largely, of problems designed by a Grand Examiner to come out neatly in finite terms, and whatever subject we tackle the first need is to overcome timidity about approximating.
— Sir Harold Jeffreys
As co-author with Bertha Swirles Jeffreys, in Methods of Mathematical Physics (1946, 1999), 8.
Some of the most important results (e.g. Cauchy’s theorem) are so surprising at first sight that nothing short of a proof can make them credible.
— Sir Harold Jeffreys
As co-author with Bertha Swirls Jeffreys, in Methods of Mathematical Physics (1946, 1999), v.
The real difficulty about vulcanism is not to see how it can start, but how it can stop.
— Sir Harold Jeffreys
Earthquakes and Mountains, 2nd edition (1950), 187.
We have to come back to something like ordinary language after all when we want to talk “about” mathematics!
— Sir Harold Jeffreys
As co-author with Bertha Swirles Jeffreys, in Methods of Mathematical Physics (1946, 1999), 2.
What the use of P [the significance level] implies, therefore, is that a hypothesis that may be true may be rejected because it has not predicted observable results that have not occurred.
— Sir Harold Jeffreys
Theory of Probability (1939), 316.
See also:
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) -- 
