Gian-Carlo Rota Quotes

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay i...

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay i...

Gian-Carlo Rota

Tags: favorite, feynman, funny, genius, humor, joke, read, richard feynman, richard p feynman, richard phillips feynman

Philosophers and psychiatrists should explain why it is that we mathematicians are in the habit of systematically erasing our footsteps. Scientists have always looked askance at this strange habit of...

Gian-Carlo Rota

Philosophers and psychiatrists should explain why it is that we mathematicians are in the habit of systematically erasing our footsteps. Scientists have always looked askance at this strange habit of...

Gian-Carlo Rota

Tags: change, explanation, habit, math, mathematics, philosophers, philosophy, psychiatrists, psychiatry, pythagoras

About Author

Gian-Carlo Rota (April 27, 1932 – April 18, 1999) was an Italian-American mathematician and philosopher. He spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked in combinatorics, functional analysis, probability theory, and phenomenology.

Making mathematics accessible to the educated layman, while keeping high scientific standards, has always been considered a treacherous navigation between the Scylla of professional contempt and the C...

Gian-Carlo Rota

Making mathematics accessible to the educated layman, while keeping high scientific standards, has always been considered a treacherous navigation between the Scylla of professional contempt and the C...

Gian-Carlo Rota

Tags: accessibility, charybdis, difficulty, educated, greek mythology, layman, math, mathematics, misunderstanding, mythology

We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of 'proving theorems.' Is a writer's job mainly that of 'writing sentences?

Gian-Carlo Rota

We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of 'proving theorems.' Is a writer's job mainly that of 'writing sentences?

Gian-Carlo Rota

Tags: funny, humor, job, joke, math, mathematics, proof, science, theorems, writer