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David Hilbert
(23 Jan 1862 - 14 Feb 1943)

German mathematician.


Science Quotes by David Hilbert (8)

Meine Herren, der Senat ist doch keine Badeanstalt.
The faculty is not a pool changing room.
Indignant reply to the blatent sex discrimination expressed in a colleague's opposition when Hilbert proposed appointing Emmy Noether as the first woman professor at their university.
— David Hilbert
Quoted in A L Mackay, Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1994).
See also:  |  Discrimination (2)  |  Emmy Noether (3)

Wir mussen wissen. Wir werden wissen.
We must know. We will know.
Inscribed on his tomb in Gilttingen.
— David Hilbert
Lecture at Konigsberg, 1930. Gesammelte Abhandlungen, Vol. 3, 387, trans. Ivor Grattan-Guinness.
See also:  |  Epitaph (14)  |  Knowledge (355)

Besides it is an error to believe that rigour is the enemy of simplicity. On the contrary we find it confirmed by numerous examples that the rigorous method is at the same time the simpler and the more easily comprehended. The very effort for rigor forces us to find out simpler methods of proof.
— David Hilbert
'Mathematical Problems', Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (Jul 1902), 8, 441.
See also:  |  Rigour (5)  |  Simplicity (33)

Geometry is the most complete science.
— David Hilbert
Quotation noted by Ivor Grattan-Guinness from unpublished Hilbert lecture course on Geometry.
See also:  |  Geometry (38)

He who seeks for methods without having a definite problem in mind seeks for the most part in vain.
— David Hilbert
'Mathematical Problems', Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (Jul 1902), 8, 444.
See also:  |  Method (16)  |  Problem (77)

Meine Herren, I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as a Privatdozent. After all, the Senate is not a bathhouse.
Objecting to sex discrimination being the reason for rejection of Emmy Noether's application to join the faculty at the University of Gottingen.
— David Hilbert
Quoted in C. Reid Hilbert: With an appreciation of Hilbert's Mathematical Work by Hermann Weyl (1970), 143.
See also:  |  Emmy Noether (3)

No one shall expel us from the paradise which Cantor has created for us.
Expressing the importance of Cantor's set theory in the development of mathematics.
— David Hilbert
In George Edward Martin, The Foundations of Geometry and the Non-Euclidean Plane (1982), 33.
See also:  |  Georg Cantor (4)  |  Creation (54)  |  Mathematics (231)  |  Paradise (2)

One hears a lot of talk about the hostility between scientists and engineers. I don't believe in any such thing. In fact I am quite certain it is untrue... There cannot possibly be anything in it because neither side has anything to do with the other.
— David Hilbert
Quoted in A. Rosenfeld, Langmuir: The Man and the Scientist (1962), 57.
See also:  |  Engineer (18)  |  Hostility (2)  |  Scientist (84)



Quotes by others about David Hilbert (1)

But in the present century, thanks in good part to the influence of Hilbert, we have come to see that the unproved postulates with which we start are purely arbitrary. They must be consistent, they had better lead to something interesting.
In A History of Geometrical Methods (1940, reprint 2003), 423.
See also:  |  Arbitrary (4)  |  Influence (15)  |  Interesting (7)  |  Lead (9)  |  Postulate (9)


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