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Clifford Truesdell
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Science Quotes by Clifford Truesdell (2 quotes)
How did Biot arrive at the partial differential equation? [the heat conduction equation] … Perhaps Laplace gave Biot the equation and left him to sink or swim for a few years in trying to derive it. That would have been merely an instance of the way great mathematicians since the very beginnings of mathematical research have effortlessly maintained their superiority over ordinary mortals.
— Clifford Truesdell
The Tragicomical History of Thermodynamics, 1822-1854 (1980), 51.
This paper gives wrong solutions to trivial problems. The basic error, however, is not new.
— Clifford Truesdell
In Mathematical Reviews 12, 561. As quoted and cited in P.R. Halmos, I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography (2013), 120
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) -- 
