A mathematician may say anything he pleases, but a physicist must be at least partially sane.
--
Quoted in R. B. Lindsay, "On the Relation of Mathematics and Physics," Scientific Monthly 59, 456 (Dec. 1944)Josiah Willard Gibbs
» Josiah Willard Gibbs - all quotes »
...there is probably less difference between the positions of a mathematician and of a physicist than is generally supposed, [...] the mathematician is in much more direct contact with reality. This may seem a paradox, since it is the physicist who deals with the subject-matter usually described as ‘real’, but [...] [a physicist] is trying to correlate the incoherent body of crude fact confronting him with some definite and orderly scheme of abstract relations, the kind of scheme he can borrow only from mathematics.
G. H. Hardy
The physicists say that I am a mathematician, and the mathematicians say that I am a physicist. I am a completely isolated man and though everybody knows me, there are very few people who really know me.
Albert Einstein
No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand at all, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language, with this 'relation,' precisely, which is yours.
Jacques Derrida
One physicist writes a study on microphysics, but another writes a book on the importance of Lenin’s and Engels’ works for the development of physics; one mathematician proves theorems, another publishes demagoguery on ingenious mathematical ideas of classical Marxists.
Aleksandr Zinovyev
Statistically, it would seem improbable that any mathematician or scientist, at the age of 66, would be able through continued research efforts, to add much to his or her previous achievements. However I am still making the effort and it is conceivable that with the gap period of about 25 years of partially deluded thinking providing a sort of vacation my situation may be atypical. Thus I have hopes of being able to achieve something of value through my current studies or with any new ideas that come in the future.
John Forbes Nash
Gibbs, Josiah Willard
Gibbs, Robert
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