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Peter Guthrie Tait Quotes

1831–1901 Scotland

Peter Guthrie Tait (28 April 1831 – 4 July 1901) was a Scottish mathematical physicist, best known for the seminal energy physics textbook Treatise on Natural Philosophy, which he co-wrote with Kelvin, and his early investigations into knot theory, which contributed to the eventual formation of topology as a mathematical discipline.

Scotland
Mathematicians
Physicists

Also known as: Peter Tait (physicist)

Random Peter Guthrie Tait quote

4 quotes

The next grand extensions of mathematical physics will, in all likelihood, be furnished by quaternions.

Oh, that's nothing – I could coach a coal scuttle to be Senior Wrangler.

[Examiners] spend their lives in discovering which pages of a text-book a man ought to read and which will not be likely to 'pay'.

There is nothing physical to be learned a priori. We have no right whatever to ascertain a single physical truth without seeking for it physically, unless it be a necessary consequence of other truths already acquired by experiment, in which case mathematical reasoning is alone requisite.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Peter Guthrie Tait (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.