Home > Mathematician
6 Demographics
As is the case in many scientific disciplines, the field of mathematics has been disproportionately dominated by men. Among the minority of prominent female mathematicians are Emmy NoetherEmmy Noether ( March 23 1882 April 14 1935) was one of the most talented mathematicians of the early 20th century, with penetrating insights that she used to develop elegant abstractions which she formalized beautifully. She was born Amalie Noether in Erl ( 1882Events February 2 The Knights of Columbus are formed in New Haven, Connecticut February 7 In Mississippi City the last heavyweight boxing championship bareknuckle fight takes place. March 2 Robert Maclean fails to assassinate Queen Victoria at Windsor Mar - 1935), Sophie Germain ( 1776 - 1831), Sofia Kovalevskaya ( 1850 - 1891), Rozsa Peter ( 1905 - 1977), Julia Robinson ( 1919 - 1985), Mary Ellen Rudin , Eva Tardos , Émilie du Châtelet and Marianna Csornyei.
7 Quotes
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...beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.
- - St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram (actually "mathematicians" in this context refers mainly to astrologers and such)
A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.
- - Paul Erdös
Die Mathematiker sind eine Art Franzosen; redet man mit ihnen, so übersetzen sie es in ihre Sprache, und dann ist es alsobald ganz etwas anderes. (Mathematicians are [like] a sort of Frenchmen; if you talk to them, they translate it into their own language, and then it is immediately something quite different.)
- - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
8 Jokes
Several old jokes common amongst the scientific disciplines illustrate the difference between the mathematical mind and that of other disciplines. One goes as follows:
- An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician are all staying at a hotel one night when a fire breaks out. The engineer wakes up and smells the smoke; he quickly grabs a garbage pail to use as a bucket, fills it with water from the bathroom, and puts out the fire in his room. He then refills the pail and douses everything flammable in the room with water. He then returns to sleep.
- The physicist wakes up, smells the smoke, jumps out of bed. He picks up a pad and pencil and makes some calculations, glancing frequently at the flames. He then measures exactly 15.6 liters of water into the garbage pail, and throws it on the flames, which are extinguished. Smiling, he returns to sleep.
- Finally the mathematician wakes up. He too grabs a pad and begins furiously writing; glancing at the flames; and then writing more. After a while he gets a satisfied look on his face; entering the bathroom, he produces a match, lights it, and then extinguishes it with a bit of running water. "Aha! A solution exists," he murmurs - and returns to his slumbers.
Another joke goes thus:
- Three men are flying in the hot air balloon and suddenly they realize that they are lost. Luckily they see a man plowing the earth and ask, "Where are we?". The man on the ground thinks for a minute and then answers, "You are in the hot air balloon". One of the men in the air than says to his friends, "He was mathematician - he thought before answering, his answer was totally right and totally useless"
Yet another joke involves an astrologer, a chemist, and a mathematician on a bus during their first visit to Scotland. They see a black sheep grazing alone in a pasture as they drive by.
- The astrologer excitedly exclaims, "Ah, this shows Scottish sheep are black!"
- The chemist didactically corrects him: "No, no, it just shows some Scottish sheep are black."
- The mathematician then says, "Actually, we can only be sure there is at least one Scottish sheep of which at least one side is black"
9 Links and references
