TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index N > Category: Number Theory

Number Theory Quotes (6 quotes)

Gauss once said, “Mathematics is the queen of the sciences and number theory the queen of mathematics.” If this is true we may add that the Disquisitions is the Magna Charter of number theory.
In Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (1878, 8, 435. As cited and translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 158.
Science quotes on:  |  Carl Friedrich Gauss (79)  |  Magna Carta (3)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Number (710)  |  Queen (14)  |  Queen Of The Sciences (6)  |  Theory (1015)

I count Maxwell and Einstein, Eddington and Dirac, among “real” mathematicians. The great modern achievements of applied mathematics have been in relativity and quantum mechanics, and these subjects are at present at any rate, almost as “useless” as the theory of numbers.
In A Mathematician's Apology (1940, 2012), 131.
Science quotes on:  |  Achievement (187)  |  Applied (176)  |  Applied Mathematics (15)  |  Count (107)  |  Paul A. M. Dirac (45)  |  Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (135)  |  Einstein (101)  |  Albert Einstein (624)  |  Great (1610)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Maxwell (42)  |  James Clerk Maxwell (91)  |  Mechanic (120)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  Modern (402)  |  Number (710)  |  Present (630)  |  Quantum (118)  |  Quantum Mechanics (47)  |  Real (159)  |  Relativity (91)  |  Subject (543)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Theory Of Numbers (7)  |  Uselessness (22)

Mathematics is the queen of the sciences and arithmetic [number theory] is the queen of mathematics. She often condescends to render service to astronomy and other natural sciences, but in all relations, she is entitled to first rank.
I>Sartorius von Waltershausen: Gauss zum Gedächtniss (1856), 79. Quoted in Robert Edouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica (1914), 271.
Science quotes on:  |  Arithmetic (144)  |  Astronomy (251)  |  First (1302)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Natural (810)  |  Natural Science (133)  |  Number (710)  |  Other (2233)  |  Queen Of The Sciences (6)  |  Rank (69)  |  Render (96)  |  Service (110)  |  Theory (1015)

Number theorists are like lotus-eaters—having tasted this food they can never give it up.
As quoted in Howard Eves, Mathematical Circles Squared (1972), 149. In Homer’s The Odyssey, lotus-eaters live in a state of dreamy forgetfulness and idleness from eating lotus fruit. Thus a lotus-eater pursues pleasure and luxury rather than dealing with practical concerns.
Science quotes on:  |  Food (213)  |  Give Up (10)  |  Never (1089)  |  Number (710)  |  Taste (93)  |  Theorist (44)

Since the examination of consistency is a task that cannot be avoided, it appears necessary to axiomatize logic itself and to prove that number theory and set theory are only parts of logic. This method was prepared long ago (not least by Frege’s profound investigations); it has been most successfully explained by the acute mathematician and logician Russell. One could regard the completion of this magnificent Russellian enterprise of the axiomatization of logic as the crowning achievement of the work of axiomatization as a whole.
Address (11 Sep 1917), 'Axiomatisches Denken' delivered before the Swiss Mathematical Society in Zürich. Translated by Ewald as 'Axiomatic Thought', (1918), in William Bragg Ewald, From Kant to Hilbert (1996), Vol. 2, 1113.
Science quotes on:  |  Achievement (187)  |  Acute (8)  |  Appear (122)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Axiom (65)  |  Completion (23)  |  Consistency (31)  |  Crown (39)  |  Enterprise (56)  |  Examination (102)  |  Explain (334)  |  Gottlob Frege (12)  |  Investigation (250)  |  Least (75)  |  Logic (311)  |  Logician (18)  |  Long (778)  |  Long Ago (12)  |  Magnificent (46)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Method (531)  |  Most (1728)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Number (710)  |  Prepared (5)  |  Profound (105)  |  Prove (261)  |  Regard (312)  |  Bertrand Russell (198)  |  Set (400)  |  Set Theory (6)  |  Successful (134)  |  Task (152)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Whole (756)  |  Work (1402)

When Ramanujan was sixteen, he happened upon a copy of Carr’s Synopsis of Mathematics. This chance encounter secured immortality for the book, for it was this book that suddenly woke Ramanujan into full mathematical activity and supplied him essentially with his complete mathematical equipment in analysis and number theory. The book also gave Ramanujan his general direction as a dealer in formulas, and it furnished Ramanujan the germs of many of his deepest developments.
In Mathematical Circles Squared (1972), 158. George Shoobridge Carr (1837-1914) wrote his Synopsis of Elementary Results in Mathematics in 1886.
Science quotes on:  |  Activity (218)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Book (413)  |  Chance (244)  |  Complete (209)  |  Copy (34)  |  Deep (241)  |  Development (441)  |  Direction (185)  |  Encounter (23)  |  Equipment (45)  |  Essential (210)  |  Formula (102)  |  Furnish (97)  |  General (521)  |  Germ (54)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  Immortality (11)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Number (710)  |  Srinivasa Ramanujan (17)  |  Secured (18)  |  Suddenly (91)  |  Supply (100)  |  Synopsis (2)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Wake (17)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail 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) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.