Quotations

Cornelius Lanczos


View the biography of Cornelius Lanczos


Most of the arts, as painting, sculpture, and music, have emotional appeal to the general public. This is because these arts can be experienced by some one or more of our senses. Such is not true of the art of mathematics; this art can be appreciated only by mathematicians, and to become a mathematician requires a long period of intensive training. The community of mathematicians is similar to an imaginary community of musical composers whose only satisfaction is obtained by the interchange among themselves of the musical scores they compose.
Quoted in H Eves Mathematical Circles Squared (Boston 1972).
Astronomy was the cradle of the natural sciences and the starting point of geometrical theories.
Quoted in D MacHale, Comic Sections (Dublin 1993)