Mathematics And Art Quotes (8 quotes)
Ultima se tangunt. How expressive, how nicely characterizing withal is mathematics! As the musician recognizes Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert in the first chords, so the mathematician would distinguish his Cauchy, Gauss, Jacobi, Helmholtz in a few pages.
In Ceremonial Speech (15 Nov 1887) celebrating the 301st anniversary of the Karl-Franzens-University Graz. Published as Gustav Robert Kirchhoff: Festrede zur Feier des 301. Gründungstages der Karl-Franzens-Universität zu Graz (1888), 29, as translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 186-187. From the original German, “Ultima se tangunt. Und wie ausdrucksfähig, wie fein charakterisirend ist dabei die Mathematik. Wie der Musiker bei den ersten Tacten Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert erkennt, so würde der Mathematiker nach wenig Seiten, seinen Cauchy, Gauss, Jacobi, Helmholtz unterscheiden.” [The Latin words translate as “the final touch”. —Webmaster]
Among the memoirs of Kirchhoff are some of uncommon beauty. … Can anything be beautiful, where the author has no time for the slightest external embellishment?—But—; it is this very simplicity, the indispensableness of each word, each letter, each little dash, that among all artists raises the mathematician nearest to the World-creator; it establishes a sublimity which is equalled in no other art, something like it exists at most in symphonic music. The Pythagoreans recognized already the similarity between the most subjective and the most objective of the arts.
In Ceremonial Speech (15 Nov 1887) celebrating the 301st anniversary of the Karl-Franzens-University Graz. Published as Gustav Robert Kirchhoff: Festrede zur Feier des 301. Gründungstages der Karl-Franzens-Universität zu Graz (1888), 28-29, as translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 186. From the original German, “Gerade unter den zuletzt erwähnten Abhandlungen Kirchhoff’s sind einige von ungewöhnlicher Schönheit. … kann etwas schön sein, wo dem Autor auch zur kleinsten äusseren Ausschmückung die Zeit fehlt?–Doch–; gerade durch diese Einfachheit, durch diese Unentbehrlichkeit jedes Wortes, jedes Buchstaben, jedes Strichelchens kömmt der Mathematiker unter allen Künstlern dem Weltenschöpfer am nächsten; sie begründet eine Erhabenheit, die in keiner Kunst ein Gleiches,–Aehnliches höchstens in der symphonischen Musik hat. Erkannten doch schon die Pythagoräer die Aehnlichkeit der subjectivsten und der objectivsten der Künste.”
It is with mathematics not otherwise than it is with music, painting or poetry. Anyone can become a lawyer, doctor or chemist, and as such may succeed well, provided he is clever and industrious, but not every one can become a painter, or a musician, or a mathematician: general cleverness and industry alone count here for nothing.
In Ueber die Anlage zur Mathematik (1900), 5. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-Book (1914), 184.
Mathematics and art are quite different. We could not publish so many papers that used, repeatedly, the same idea and still command the respect of our colleagues.
As given in essay, Ronald Coifman and Robert S. Strichartz, 'The School of Antoni Zygmund', collected in Peter Duren (ed.), A Century of Mathematics in America (1989), 348. The comment was made “after passing through several rooms in a museum filled with the paintings of a rather well-known modem painter”. The authors acknowledge students of Zygmund provided personal recollections to them for the essay in general. Webmaster speculates the quote is from a student recollection, and not necessarily verbatim.
Only the privileged few are called to enjoy it [mathematics] fully, it is true; but is it not the same with all the noblest arts?
From 'The Relation of Analysis and Mathematical Physics', Bulletin American Mathematical Society (1899), 4 (1899), 248. As cited in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-Book (1914), 181.
The mathematic, then, is an art. As such it has its styles and style periods. It is not, as the layman and the philosopher (who is in this matter a layman too) imagine, substantially unalterable, but subject like every art to unnoticed changes form epoch to epoch. The development of the great arts ought never to be treated without an (assuredly not unprofitable) side-glance at contemporary mathematics.
In Oswald Spengler and Charles Francis Atkinson (trans.), The Decline of the West (1926), 62.
The mathematician’s best work is art, a high perfect art, as daring as the most secret dreams of imagination, clear and limpid. Mathematical genius and artistic genius touch one another.
As quoted, without citation, in Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life (1923), 139.
The true mathematician is always a good deal of an artist, an architect, yes, of a poet. Beyond the real world, though perceptibly connected with it, mathematicians have intellectually created an ideal world, which they attempt to develop into the most perfect of all worlds, and which is being explored in every direction. None has the faintest conception of this world, except he who knows it.
In Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker Vereinigung, 32, 381. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-Book (1914), 184.
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) -- 
