Log24

"Eigenvalues. Fixed points. Stable equilibria.
Mathematicians like things that stay put.
And if they can't stay put, the objects of study
should at least repeat themselves on a regular basis. . . ."

— Barry Cipra, "A Moveable Feast," SIAM News , Jan. 14, 2006

* For a full  four years, see also March 18, 2013.

Mathematician Norbert Wiener reportedly died on this date in 1964.

"Mathematics is too arduous and uninviting a field to appeal to those to whom it does not give great rewards. These rewards are of exactly the same character as those of the artist. To see a difficult uncompromising material take living shape and meaning is to be Pygmalion, whether the material is stone or hard, stonelike logic. To see meaning and understanding come where there has been no meaning and no understanding is to share the work of a demiurge. No amount of technical correctness and no amount of labour can replace this creative moment, whether in the life of a mathematician or of a painter or musician. Bound up with it is a judgment of values, quite parallel to the judgment of values that belongs to the painter or the musician. Neither the artist nor the mathematician may be able to tell you what constitutes the difference between a significant piece of work and an inflated trifle; but if he is not able to recognise this in his own heart, he is no artist and no mathematician."

— Wiener, Ex-Prodigy