Quotations

Étienne Montucla


View the biography of Étienne Montucla


[Mathematics is] the science of the ratios of size or of number, which can have between them all things that are susceptible of augmentation or of diminution. ... Mathematics divides up naturally into two classes; the one which one calls pure and abstract; the other those which one calls mixed, or more ordinarily physico-mathematical.
Histoire des mathématiques (1799)