Group Theory Quotes (5 quotes)
[On the concept of group:] … what a wealth, what a grandeur of thought may spring from what slight beginnings.
From Address (1913) of the president to the Mathematical and Physical Science Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Birmingham, 'The Place of Pure Mathematics', Science (12 Sep 1913), New Series,38, No. 976, 352. Excerpted in Florian Cajori, 'The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Introduction', A History of Mathematics (1919), 283
Nowadays group theoretical methods—especially those involving characters and representations, pervade all branches of quantum mechanics.
Group Theory and its Significance', Proceedings, American Philosophical Society (1973), 117, No. 5, 380.
The importance of group theory was emphasized very recently when some physicists using group theory predicted the existence of a particle that had never been observed before, and described the properties it should have. Later experiments proved that this particle really exists and has those properties.
Groups in the New Mathematics (1967), 7. Quoted in Rosemary Schmalz, Out of the Mouths of Mathematicians: A Quotation Book for Philomaths (1993), 42.
We may as well cut out group theory. That is a subject that will never be of any use in physics.
Discussing mathematics curriculum reform at Princeton University (1910), as quoted in Abraham P. Hillman, Gerald L. Alexanderson, Abstract Algebra: A First Undergraduate Course (1994), 94.
Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos.
In 'Groups and Matrices, an Excursion in the Practical, The Queen of the Sciences (1938), Chap. 6, 73.
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) -- 
