There are very complex shapes which would be the same from close by and far away.

The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines.

I've been a professor of mathematics at Harvard and at Yale. At Yale for a long time. But I'm not a mathematician only. I'm a professor of physics, of economics, a long list. Each element of this list is normal. The combination of these elements is very rare at best.

Although computer memory is no longer expensive, there's always a finite size buffer somewhere. When a big piece of news arrives, everybody sends a message to everybody else, and the buffer fills

Unfortunately, the world has not been designed for the convenience of mathematicians.

Think of color, pitch, loudness, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics

Everything is roughness, except for the circles. How many circles are there in nature? Very, very few. The straight lines. Very shapes are very, very smooth. But geometry had laid them aside because they were too complicated.