Skip to content

It came as a tremendous surprise, for in his student days Einstein had been a lazy dog... He never bothered about mathematics at all.

— Hermann Minkowski

Another quote →

Topics

Mathematics

More quotes by Hermann Minkowski

The rigid electron is in my view a monster in relation to Maxwell's equations, whose innermost harmony is the principle of relativity.

Oh, that Einstein, always cutting lectures... I really would not believe him capable of it.

The word postulate of relativity... appears to me very stale... I should rather like to give this statement the name Postulate of the absolute world (or briefly, world-postulate).

Space and Time (1909)

The assumption of the contraction of the electron in Lorentz's theory must be introduced at an earlier stage than Lorentz has actually done.

The Fundamental Equations for Electromagnetic Processes in Moving Bodies (1907)

The whole world appears resolved into such world-lines. And I should like to say beforehand that, according to my opinion, it would be possible for the physical laws to find their fullest expression as correlations of these world-lines.

Space and Time (1909)

All Hermann Minkowski quotes →

You may also like

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973)

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite.

William Blake The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)

Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then such and such another proposition is true of that thing.

Bertrand Russell

The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.

Núria Añó

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Hermann Minkowski (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.