Fourier Quotes

“True greatness is when your name is like ampere, watt, and fourier—when it's spelled with a lower case letter.”
― Richard Hamming

“… Fourier's great mathematical poem ...

{Referring to Joseph Fourier's mathematical theory of the conduction of heat, one of the precursors to thermodynamics.}”
― William Thomson Kelvin, Treatise on Natural Philosophy: Volume 2

“Derrière la série de Fourier, d'autres séries analogues sont entrées dans la domaine de l'analyse; elles y sont entrees par la même porte; elles ont été imaginées en vue des applications.

After the Fourier series, other series have entered the domain of analysis; they entered by the same door; they have been imagined in view of applications.”
― Henri Poincaré, The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare

“Nietzsche asked in 1882: 'What is the point of all the art of our works of art if we lose that higher art, the art of festivals?' The brief moment of intoxication lures us off the via dolorosa. Such spectacles also asserted the underlying continuity of European society since the Renaissance, despite steam engine, trainm and telegraph. Such was the confidence in the homology between the present day and a supposedly integrated and self-assured sixteenth century that people were still willing, in donning costumes, to turn themselves into living works of art. (This was the bourgeois response to the fantasy of the socialist Fourier, who thought people could become living artworks if they disrobed.) The contrast between the costumes and the black-and-white everyday garb of 1879, a way of dressing as if designed to be photographed, was sharp. Fourteen thousand citizens took part in Makart's extravaganza, 300,000 more looked on.”
― Christopher S. Wood, A History of Art History