Henri Poincare Quotes
When the physicists ask us for the solution of a problem, it is not drudgery that they impose on us, on the contrary, it is us who owe them thanks.
Poincaré, Henri. The Foundations of Science. Translated by George Bruce Halsted, The Science Press, 1913, p. 382.
Even before being an independent country, America had two contrasting and contradictory views of patents—the one that Franklin herein states and the one what was written into the constitution that argued that by granting patents inventors would be incentivized to make their trade secrets public if they had an exclusive monopoly on if for a period of time. Both of these philosophies towards patents have coexisted since then. There was a Federal patent system for those who wanted to use it, and for those who did not, they could enter the invention to the public domain as Franklin urged. Arguably, we have obtained the best of both approaches. Millions of patents have been filed and granted and yet some of the most important inventions have followed the Franklin approach. See the quotes about the Salk Polio Vaccine—{29154} and {29187} and the quote on "open source" computer software—{29676}. With billions of dollars being made by protected software in the early 21st century, over half of the world's computers were operating on systems that was public domain and without charge as just one large example of the Franklin philosophy still coexisting.
Jules Henri Poincaré was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as "The Last Universalist", since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime.
