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Michael Atiyah Quotes

1929–2019 England

England
Mathematicians

Random Michael Atiyah quote

30 quotes

Without dreams there is no art, no mathematics, no life.

Poncelet's closure theorem for triangles and circles.

3 Regular Heptagons formed by continuously joining 1 (blue), 2 (red), or 3 (black) points apart, with respective circumscribed circles.

The most important things in life.., whether you're a football player or a virus, is to deter attackers and run away when necessary.

The Role of Beauty in Mathematics (2015)

Only two people in the universe knew what an electron was, you and God, and you've forgotten!

Sir Michael Atiyah, What is a Spinor? (2013)

4 dimensions is... very important, even if you don't believe in it.

Geometry in 2, 3 and 4 Dimensions (2011)

Abstraction enables you to put lots of things in the past [together] in one package, which you label "algebra" or whatever it may be.

The Youthful Spirit of Mathematics (2012)

The 19th century finished with a very very deep theory of 2 dimensional surfaces, in all aspects: geometrical, analytical, complex, real.

Geometry in 2, 3 and 4 Dimensions (2011)

This 'Hodge conjecture' has by now achieved a considerable status, almost on a par with the Riemann hypothesis or the Poincaré conjecture.

In the 20th century we moved... from 2 dimensions to 3...

Geometry in 2, 3 and 4 Dimensions (2011)

In 3 dimensions the curvature is more complicated... It's determined not by by a single number r, but by a number R that depends on 2 directions i and j, called the Ricci curvature...

Geometry in 2, 3 and 4 Dimensions (2011)

Only God knows! Maybe Dirac, but he's no longer with us.

Sir Michael Atiyah, What is a Spinor? (2013)

So replace "electron" by "spinor" and you get the tone of this lecture.

Sir Michael Atiyah, What is a Spinor? (2013)

In dimension one, along a straight line or on the edge of a circle there is no real geometry. All you can do is to measure how far along the path you are.

Geometry in 2, 3 and 4 Dimensions (2011)

If you want to survive difficult times... be a mathematician.

The Role of Beauty in Mathematics (2015)

But spinors exist without the need of complex structures. So what is a spinor when there's no complex structure? That's really the question.

Sir Michael Atiyah, What is a Spinor? (2013)

Nobody succeeded until two of the most famous figures in mathematics appeared... Niels Abel and Évariste Galois.

The Role of Beauty in Mathematics (2015)

My own supervisor, William Hodge, the creator of the fertile theory of harmonic forms, was not a genius like Ramanujan but resembled Lefschetz.

You expand the content and... unify the subject.

The Youthful Spirit of Mathematics (2012)

Should you just be an algebraist or a geometer? is like saying Would you rather be deaf or blind? If you are blind, you do not see space: if you are deaf, you do not hear, and hearing takes place in time. On the whole, we prefer to have both faculties.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Michael Atiyah (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.