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Indignant reply to the blatent sex discrimination expressed in a colleague's opposition when Hilbert proposed appointing Emmy Noether as the first woman professor at their university.

David Hilbert

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David Hilbert
Age: 81 †
Born: 1862
Born: January 23
Died: 1943
Died: February 14
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
University Teacher
Königsberg i. Pr.
Colleagues
Emmy
First
Professors
Colleague
Discrimination
Emmys
Opposition
Indignant
University
Proposed
Reply
Sex
Professor
Hilbert
Woman
Expressed
Appointing
Firsts

More quotes by David Hilbert

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The tool which serves as intermediary between theory and practice, between thought and observation, is mathematics it is mathematics which builds the linking bridges and gives the ever more reliable forms.
David Hilbert
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The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality.
David Hilbert
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Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.
David Hilbert
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We do not master a scientific theory until we have shelled and completely prised free its mathematical kernel.
David Hilbert
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Is mathematics doomed to suffer the same fate as other sciences that have split into separate branches?... Mathematics is, in my opinion, an indivisible whole... May the new century bring with it ingenious champions and many zealous and enthusiastic disciples.
David Hilbert
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Geometry, like arithmetic, requires for its logical development only a small number of simple, fundamental principles. These fundamental principles are called the axioms of geometry.
David Hilbert
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Every kind of science, if it has only reached a certain degree of maturity, automatically becomes a part of mathematics.
David Hilbert
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[On Cantor's work:] The finest product of mathematical genius and one of the supreme achievements of purely intellectual human activity.
David Hilbert
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Physics is becoming too difficult for the physicists.
David Hilbert
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Mathematical science is in my opinion an indivisible whole, an organism whose vitality is conditioned upon the connection of its parts.
David Hilbert
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Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.
David Hilbert
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If one were to bring ten of the wisest men in the world together and ask them what was the most stupid thing in existence, they would not be able to discover anything so stupid as astrology.
David Hilbert
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Galileo was no idiot. Only an idiot could believe that science requires martyrdom - that may be necessary in religion, but in time a scientific result will establish itself.
David Hilbert
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No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man no other idea has so fruitfully stimulated his intellect yet no other concept stands in greater need of clarification than that of the infinite.
David Hilbert
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I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as a Privatdozent. After all, the Senate is not a bathhouse. Objecting to sex discrimination being the reason for rejection of Emmy Noether's application to join the faculty at the University of Gottingen.
David Hilbert
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Before beginning [to try to prove Fermat's Last Theorem] I should have to put in three years of intensive study, and I haven't that much time to squander on a probable failure.
David Hilbert
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Sometimes it happens that a man's circle of horizon becomes smaller and smaller, and as the radius approaches zero it concentrates on one point. And then that becomes his point of view.
David Hilbert
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Some people have got a mental horizon of radius zero and call it their point of view.
David Hilbert
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I didn't work especially hard at mathematics at school, because I knew that's what I'd be doing later.
David Hilbert
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The infinite! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man.
David Hilbert