Hermite Quotes

In his wretched life of less than twenty-seven years Abel accomplished so much of the highest order that one of the leading mathematicians of the Nineteenth Century (Hermite, 1822-1901) could say without exaggeration, 'Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for five hundred years.' Asked how he had done all this in the six or seven years of his working life, Abel replied, 'By studying the masters, not the pupils. ~ Eric Temple Bell

Talk with M. Hermite. He never evokes a concrete image, yet you soon perceive that the more abstract entities are to him like living creatures. ~ Henri Poincare

Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for five hundred years. ~ Charles Hermite

I shall risk nothing on an attempt to prove the transcendence of p. If others undertake this enterprise, no one will be happier than I in their success. But believe me, it will not fail to cost them some effort. ~ Charles Hermite

I believe that numbers and functions of Analysis are not the arbitrary result of our minds; I think that they exist outside of us, with the same character of necessity as the things of objective reality, and we meet them or discover them, and study them, as do the physicists, the chemists and the zoologists. ~ Charles Hermite

I turn aside with a shudder of horror from this lamentable plague of functions which have no derivatives. ~ Charles Hermite

I turn away with fright and horror from the lamentable evil of functions which do not have derivatives. ~ Charles Hermite

There exists, if I am not mistaken, an entire world which is the totality of mathematical truths, to which we have access only with our mind, just as a world of physical reality exists, the one like the other independent of ourselves, both of divine creation. ~ Charles Hermite