“Mathematics does to the mind what

Music does to the soul and

Poetry to the heart”

The Beauty of

Mathematics

Aristotle (384 B.C.-322 B.C.), Poetics

Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry.

J.H.Poincare (1854-1912), (cited in H.E.Huntley, The Divine Proportion, Dover, 1970)

The mathematician does not study pure mathematics because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it and he delights in it

because it is beautiful.

Lawrence University catalog, Cited in Essays in Humanistic

Mathematics, Alvin White, ed, MAA, 1993 Mathematics is the natural home of

both abstract thought and the laws of nature. It is at once pure logic and

creative art.

G. H. Hardy (1877 - 1947), A Mathematician's Apology,

Cambridge University Press, 1994.

The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's must be beautiful;

the ideas, like the colors or the words must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place

in this world for ugly mathematics.

J.Bronowski, Science and Human Values, Pelican, 1964.

Mathematics in this sense is a form of poetry, which has the same relation to the prose of practical mathematics as

poetry has to prose in any other language. The element of poetry, the

delight of exploring the medium for its own sake, is an essential ingredient in

the creative process.

Jane Muir, Of Men & Numbers, Dover, 1996. Gauss: You have no idea how much poetry there is in the calculation of a

table of logarithms!