Symmetry Quotes

“In 1940, the pacifist and mathematician Andre´ Weil, brother of the French philosopher Simone Weil, found himself in prison awaiting trial for desertion. During those months in Rouen prison, Weil produced one of the greatest discoveries of the twentieth century, on solving elliptic curves. He wrote to his wife: ‘My mathematics work is proceeding beyond my wildest hopes, and I am even a bit worried – if it is only in prison that I work so well, will I have to arrange to spend two or three months locked up every year?’ On hearing of his breakthrough, fellow mathematician Henri Cartan wrote back to Weil: ‘We’re not all lucky enough to sit and work undisturbed like you...”
― Marcus du Sautoy, Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature

“The Goldberg Variations is a good example of how symmetry is not just a physical property but pervades many abstract structures.”
― Marcus du Sautoy, Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature

“The patterns of tiles created by the Moors are of secondary interest: it is the underlying group of symmetries which preserve aspects of the patterns that defines the geometry of the [Alhambra's] murals.”
― Marcus du Sautoy, Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature

“I also fell in love with Borges. He is a mathematician’s writer. His short stories are like mathematical proofs, delicately constructed and with ideas laced together effortlessly. Each step is taken with precision and watertight logic, yet the narrative is full of surprising twists and turns.”
― Marcus du Sautoy, Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature

“Galois did not have a clear vision of the possible shapes lurking behind an equation, or of why the language he was developing would help reveal the symmetry of those shapes. Perhaps it was just as well, because the power of the language lay in its ability to create an abstraction – a mathematical description that was independent of any underlying geometry. What Galois could see was that every equation would have its own collection of permutations of the solutions which would preserve the laws relating these solutions, and that analysing the collection of permutations together revealed the secrets of each equation. He called this collection ‘the group’ of permutations associated with the equation. Galois discovered that it was the particular way in which these permutations interacted with each other that indicated whether an equation could be solved or not.”
― Marcus du Sautoy, Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature