7 Quotes by W.W. Rouse Ball

Foreshadowings of the principles and even of the language of [the infinitesimal] calculus can be found in the writings of Napier, Kepler, Cavalieri, Fermat, Wallis, and Barrow. It was Newton's good luck to come at a time when everything was ripe for the discovery, and his ability enabled him to construct almost at once a complete calculus.

The manner of Demoivre's death has a certain interest for psychologists. Shortly before it, he declared that it was necessary for him to sleep some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour longer each day than the preceding one: the day after he had thus reached a total of something over twenty-three hours he slept up to the limit of twenty-four hours, and then died in his sleep.

Biot, who assisted Laplace in revising it [The Mécanique Céleste] for the press, says that Laplace himself was frequently unable to recover the details in the chain of reasoning, and if satisfied that the conclusions were correct, he was content to insert the constantly recurring formula, 'Il est àisé avoir' [it is easy to see].

For other great mathematicians or philosophers, he used the epithets magnus, or clarus, or clarissimus; for Newton alone he kept the prefix summus.

...and his analysis proved him to be the first of theoretical astronomers no less than the greatest of 'arithmeticians.

Newton took no exercise, indulged in no amusements, and worked incessantly, often spending eighteen or nineteen hours out of the twenty-four in writing.

Babbage … gave the name to the [Cambridge] Analytical Society, which he stated was formed to advocate 'the principles of pure d-ism as opposed to the dot-age of the university.