G. H. Hardy
G. H. Hardy
Godfrey Harold "G. H." Hardy FRS was an English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth7 February 1877
science ideas lasts
A mathematician ... has no material to work with but ideas, and so his patterns are likely to last longer, since ideas wear less with time than words.
achievement mathematics endure
As history proves abundantly, mathematical achievement, whatever its intrinsic worth, is the most enduring of all.
lying eye science
There is always more in one of Ramanujan's formulae than meets the eye, as anyone who sets to work to verify those which look the easiest will soon discover. In some the interest lies very deep, in others comparatively near the surface; but there is not one which is not curious and entertaining.
ambition pride curiosity
If intellectual curiosity, professional pride, and ambition are the dominant incentives to research, then assuredly no one has a fairer chance of gratifying them than a mathematician.
class imagine newton
Bradman is a whole class above any batsman who has ever lived: if Archimedes, Newton and Gauss remain in the Hobbs class, I have to admit the possibility of a class above them, which I find difficult to imagine. They had better be moved from now on into the Bradman class.
bored boring should
No one should ever be bored. … One can be horrified, or disgusted, but one can’t be bored.
philosophy hands obscure
... Philosophy proper is a subject, on the one hand so hopelessly obscure, on the other so astonishingly elementary, that there knowledge hardly counts.
intelligent months instruction
A month's intelligent instruction in the theory of numbes ought to be twice as instructive, twice as useful, and at least 10 times as entertaining as the same amount of 'calculus for engineers'.
humble men done
Good work is not done by 'humble' men
people wells can-do
Most people can do nothing at all well
years numbers branches
The theory of numbers, more than any other branch of mathematics, began by being an experimental science. Its most famous theorems have all been conjectured, sometimes a hundred years or more before they were proved; and they have been suggested by the evidence of a mass of computations.
years numbers purpose
No one has yet discovered any warlike purpose to be served by the theory of numbers or relativity, and it seems unlikely that anyone will do so for many years.
mind may habit
Mathematics may, like poetry or music, "promote and sustain a lofty habit of mind."
beautiful moving mean
A chess problem is genuine mathematics, but it is in some way "trivial" mathematics. However, ingenious and intricate, however original and surprising the moves, there is something essential lacking. Chess problems are unimportant. The best mathematics is serious as well as beautiful-"important" if you like, but the word is very ambiguous, and "serious" expresses what I mean much better.