No mathematician should ever allow him to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game. Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who have done great work later; [but] I do not know of a single instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty. A mathematician may still be competent enough at sixty, but it is useless to expect him to have original ideas.

About This Quote

About G.H. Hardy

G.H. Hardy was a 19th-century British mathematician. Godfrey Harold Hardy was an English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis. In biology, he is known for the Hardy–Weinberg principle, a basic principle of population genetics. Read more on Wikipedia →

Themes

  • Science — Discovery, inquiry, and the wonders of the natural world

More quotes by G.H. Hardy

Related Quotes