John C. Mather Quotes

A googolplex is precisely as far from infinity as is the number 1... no matter what number you have in mind, infinity is larger still.

If equations are trains threading the landscape of numbers, then no train stops at pi.

Math is sometimes called the science of patterns.

For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics.

My older brother was the person who got me interested in science in general. He used to tell me what he learned in school. My first memory of mathematics is probably the time that he told me about the problem of adding numbers from 1 to 100.

I like science and mathematics. When I say mathematics, I don't mean algebra or math in that sense, but the mathematics of things.

Mathematics is the queen of the sciences.

Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income.

Primes are the atoms of the arithmetic - the hydrogen and oxygen of the world of numbers

There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1.

It is always noteworthy that all those who seriously study this science [the theory of numbers] conceive a sort of passion for it.

One would be hard put to find a set of whole numbers with a more fascinating history and more elegant properties surrounded by greater depths of mystery--and more totally useless--than the perfect numbers.

I count Maxwell and Einstein, Eddington and Dirac, among "real" mathematicians. The great modern achievements of applied mathematics have been in relativity and quantum mechanics, and these subjects are at present at any rate, almost as "useless" as the theory of numbers.

Mathematics has been called the science of the infinite. Indeed, the mathematician invents finite constructions by which questions are decided that by their very nature refer to the infinite. This is his glory.

It is almost as hard to define mathematics as it is to define economics, and one is tempted to fall back on the famous old definition attributed to Jacob Viner, "Economics is what economists do," and say that mathematics is what mathematicians do. A large part of mathematics deals with the formal relations of quantities or numbers.

Many people believe that the grains of sand are infinite in multitude ... Others think that although their number is not without limit, no number can ever be named which will be greater than the number of grains of sand. But I shall try to prove to you that among the numbers which I have named there are those which exceed the number of grains in a heap of sand the size not only of the earth, but even of the universe

I can show you that the art of calculation has to do with odd and even numbers in their numerical relations to themselves and to each other.

Nature does not count nor do integers occur in nature. Man made them all, integers and all the rest, Kronecker to the contrary notwithstanding.

For mathematics, even to the logical forms in which it moves, is entirely dependent on the concept of natural number.

Nonmathematical people sometimes ask me, “You know math, huh? Tell me something I’ve always wondered, What is infinity divided by infinity?” I can only reply, “The words you just uttered do not make sense. That was not a mathematical sentence. You spoke of ‘infinity’ as if it were a number. It’s not. You may as well ask, 'What is truth divided by beauty?’ I have no clue. I only know how to divide numbers. ‘Infinity,’ ‘truth,’ ‘beauty’—those are not numbers.

Numbers are really fascinating things, and they do play a big part in our lives. They are a language of their own.

Now the denominator ... why don't they just call it the bottom number? The denominator ... that sounds like a Schwarzenegger movie doesn't it? [impersonating Arnold Schwarzenegger] I am the Denominator. I'll give your leg a compound fraction!

I tell you, with complex numbers you can do anything.

As I considered the matter carefully it gradually came to light that all those matters only were referred to mathematics in which order and measurements are investigated, and that it makes no difference whether it be in numbers, figures, stars, sounds or any other object that the question of measurement arises. I saw consequently that there must be some general science to explain that element as a whole which gives rise to problems about order and measurement, restricted as these are to no special subject matter. This, I perceived was called 'universal mathematics'.

Topology and number theory are my faves.