Timothy Gowers Quotes

#1. Although the prime numbers are rigidly determined, they somehow feel like experimental data.

Timothy Gowers

#2. A typical mathematician does not actively try to be useful. Individual mathematicians are motivated primarily by a subtle mixture of ambition and intellectual curiosity, and not by a wish to benefit society, nevertheless, mathematics as a whole does benefit society.

Timothy Gowers

#3. Moreover, if one selects a problem, works on it in isolation for a few years and finally solves it, there is a danger, unless the problem is very famous, that it will no longer be regarded as all that significant.

Timothy Gowers

#4. What a mathematical proof actually does is show that certain conclusions, such as the irrationality of , follow from certain premises, such as the principle of mathematical induction. The validity of these premises is an entirely independent matter which can safely be left to philosophers.

Timothy Gowers

#5. Can we have genuine knowledge of space without ever leaving our armchairs?

Timothy Gowers

#6. The atlas is a manifold. This is a typical mathematician's use of the word "is", and should not be confused with the normal use.

Timothy Gowers

#7. This attitude [the abstract method in mathematics] can be encapsulated in the following slogan: a mathematical object is what it does.

Timothy Gowers

#8. Here is something Category-Theorists like: it is trivial, but not trivially trivial.

Timothy Gowers

#9. It is obvious that mathematics needs both sorts of mathematicians, theory-builders and problem-solvers.

Timothy Gowers