Although the prime numbers are rigidly determined, they somehow feel like experimental data.

Although the prime numbers are rigidly determined, they somehow feel like experimental data.

A typical mathematician does not actively try to be useful. Individual mathematicians are motivated primarily by a subtle mixture of ambition and intellectual curiosity, and not by a wish to benefit society, nevertheless, mathematics as a whole does benefit society.

It is obvious that mathematics needs both sorts of mathematicians, theory-builders and problem-solvers.

This attitude [the abstract method in mathematics] can be encapsulated in the following slogan: a mathematical object is what it does.

... the atlas is a manifold. This is a typical mathematician's use of the word "is", and should not be confused with the normal use.

Moreover, if one selects a problem, works on it in isolation for a few years and finally solves it, there is a danger, unless the problem is very famous, that it will no longer be regarded as all that significant.