10 Quotes by Robert Kanigel

  • Author Robert Kanigel
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    Plenty of mathematicians, Hardy knew, could follow a step-by-step discursus unflaggingly – yet counted for nothing beside Ramanujan. Years later, he would contrive an informal scale of natural mathematical ability on which he assigned himself a 25 and Littlewood a 30. To David Hilbert, the most eminent mathematician of the day, he assigned an 80. To Ramanujan he gave 100.

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Plenty of mathematicians, Hardy knew, could follow a step-by-step discursus unflaggingly – yet counted for nothing beside Ramanujan. Years later, he would contrive an informal scale of natural mathematical ability on which he assigned himself a 25 and Littlewood a 30. To David Hilbert, the most eminent mathematician of the day, he assigned an 80. To Ramanujan he gave 100.

-Robert Kanigel

 

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