Brian Greene Quotes
I think math is a hugely creative field, because there are some very well-defined operations that you have to work within. You are, in a sense, straightjacketed by the rules of the mathematics. But within that constrained environment, it's up to you what you do with the symbols.
Greene, Brian. Interview. American Academy of Achievement, 10 May 2006.
Feynman generally emphasized the importance of a scientist understanding the mathematics of his/her subject, especially where nature's complexities abounded. At the time few appreciated the importance in the biological sciences of mathematics which we know today is so essential.
Although there are applied Mathematicians and Statisticians striving for utility of their work, most of the great breakthroughs, both practical and theoretical, have been made by the theoretical mathematicians.
Mathematical analysis is a much sounder method for determining truth than argument but it only is applicable where the real world fits the mathematical structures that we have which unfortunately is not enough to answer most of the political questions facing us.
Brian Randolph Greene is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician, and string theorist. Greene was a physics professor at Cornell University from 1990-1995, and has been a professor at Columbia University since 1996 and chairman of the World Science Festival since co-founding it in 2008. Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi–Yau manifolds (concretely, relating the conifold to one of its orbifolds). He also described the flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point.
