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: “Environmental extremists ... wouldn�t let you build a house unless it looked like a bird�s nest.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index P > Category: Perfect Number

Perfect Number Quotes (6 quotes)

[The screw machine] was on the principle of the guage or sliding lathe now in every workshop throughout the world; the perfection of which consists in that most faithful agent gravity, making the joint, and that almighty perfect number three, which is in harmony itself. I was young when I learned that principle. I had never seen my grandmother putting a chip under a three-legged milking-stool; but she always had to put a chip under a four-legged table, to keep it steady. I cut screws of all dimensions by this machine, and did them perfectly. (1846)
Quoted in ASME International and Heritage Committee, Landmarks in Mechanical Engineering.
Science quotes on:  |  Agent (73)  |  Almighty (23)  |  Consist (223)  |  Cut (116)  |  Dimension (64)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Harmony (105)  |  Joint (31)  |  Learn (672)  |  Learned (235)  |  Machine (271)  |  Making (300)  |  Most (1728)  |  Never (1089)  |  Number (710)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Principle (530)  |  Screw (17)  |  Steady (45)  |  Table (105)  |  Throughout (98)  |  Workshop (14)  |  World (1850)  |  Young (253)

~~[Orphan]~~ Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
Appears without citation in Howard W. Eves, Mathematical Circles Squared (1972), 7, and it is noted with the fact that only 12 perfect numbers were known in Descartes’ time. Webmaster regards this as an orphan (better regarded as anonymous), and has so far been unable to trace a primary source in the work of Descartes. Can you help?
Science quotes on:  |  Number (710)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Rare (94)

230(231-1) ... is the greatest perfect number known at present, and probably the greatest that ever will be discovered; for; as they are merely curious without being useful, it is not likely that any person will attempt to find a number beyond it.
In An Elementary Investigation of the Theory of Numbers (1811), 43. The stated number, which evaluates as 2305843008139952128 was discovered by Euler in 1772 as the eighth known perfect number. It has 19 digits. By 2013, the 48th perfect number found had 34850340 digits.
Science quotes on:  |  Attempt (266)  |  Being (1276)  |  Beyond (316)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Curious (95)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Find (1014)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Known (453)  |  Merely (315)  |  Number (710)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Person (366)  |  Present (630)  |  Unlikely (15)  |  Useful (260)  |  Usefulness (92)  |  Will (2350)

It is profitable nevertheless to permit ourselves to talk about 'meaningless' terms in the narrow sense if the preconditions to which all profitable operations are subject are so intuitive and so universally accepted as to form an almost unconscious part of the background of the public using the term. Physicists of the present day do constitute a homogenous public of this character; it is in the air that certain sorts of operation are valueless for achieving certain sorts of result. If one wants to know how many planets there are one counts them but does not ask a philosopher what is the perfect number.
Reflections of a Physicist (1950), 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Air (366)  |  Analysis (244)  |  Ask (420)  |  Background (44)  |  Certain (557)  |  Character (259)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Count (107)  |  Do (1905)  |  Form (976)  |  Know (1538)  |  Narrow (85)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  Number (710)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Ourselves (247)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Permit (61)  |  Philosopher (269)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Physicist (270)  |  Planet (402)  |  Present (630)  |  Profitable (29)  |  Result (700)  |  Sense (785)  |  Subject (543)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Want (504)

The theory of numbers is particularly liable to the accusation that some of its problems are the wrong sort of questions to ask. I do not myself think the danger is serious; either a reasonable amount of concentration leads to new ideas or methods of obvious interest, or else one just leaves the problem alone. “Perfect numbers” certainly never did any good, but then they never did any particular harm.
In A Mathematician’s Miscellany (1953). Reissued as Béla Bollobás (ed.), Littlewood’s Miscellany (1986), 74.
Science quotes on:  |  Accusation (6)  |  Alone (324)  |  Amount (153)  |  Ask (420)  |  Certainly (185)  |  Concentration (29)  |  Danger (127)  |  Do (1905)  |  Good (906)  |  Harm (43)  |  Idea (881)  |  Interest (416)  |  Lead (391)  |  Leave Alone (3)  |  Liable (5)  |  Method (531)  |  Myself (211)  |  Never (1089)  |  New (1273)  |  New Ideas (17)  |  Number (710)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Problem (731)  |  Question (649)  |  Reasonable (29)  |  Serious (98)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Theory Of Numbers (7)  |  Think (1122)  |  Wrong (246)

These works [the creation of the world] are recorded to have been completed in six days … because six is a perfect number … [and] the perfection of the works was signified by the number six.
From De Civitate Dei (early 400s), as translated by Marcus Dods, collected in The Works of Aurelius Augustine (1871), Vol. 1: 'Of the Perfection of the Number Six, which is the First of the Numbers Which is Composed of its Aliquot Parts', The City of God, Book 11, sect. 30, 474. Also seen translated as “Six is a number perfect in itself, and not because God created the world in six days; rather the contrary is true. God created the world in six days because this number is perfect, and it would remain perfect, even if the work of the six days did not exist.” [Note: 6 can be exactly divided (excluding itself) by 1, 2 or 3. It is a perfect number because those possible divisors also add up to a sum of 6.]
Science quotes on:  |  Complete (209)  |  Completed (30)  |  Creation (350)  |  Number (710)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Record (161)  |  Signify (17)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)


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.