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Chess problems are the hymn-tunes of mathematics.

G. H. Hardy

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G. H. Hardy
Age: 70 †
Born: 1877
Born: February 7
Died: 1947
Died: December 1
Academic
Mathematician
University Teacher
Cranleigh
Surrey
G. H. Hardy
Godfrey Harold Hardy
Godfrey·Harold·Hardy
Godfrey Harold
Mathematics
Problems
Science
Problem
Hymn
Hymns
Tunes
Chess

More quotes by G. H. Hardy

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A mathematician ... has no material to work with but ideas, and so his patterns are likely to last longer, since ideas wear less with time than words.
G. H. Hardy
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No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game
G. H. Hardy
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A science or an art may be said to be useful if its development increases, even indirectly, the material well-being and comfort of men, it promotes happiness, using that word in a crude and commonplace way.
G. H. Hardy
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Bombs are probably more merciful than bayonets
G. H. Hardy
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I do not know an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty
G. H. Hardy
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The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful.
G. H. Hardy
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Most people can do nothing at all well
G. H. Hardy
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The case for my life... is this: that I have added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more
G. H. Hardy
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For my part, it is difficult for me to say what I owe to Ramanujan - his originality has been a constant source of suggestion to me ever since I knew him, and his death is one of the worst blows I have ever had.
G. H. Hardy
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A chess problem is simply an exercise in pure mathematics.
G. H. Hardy
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In [great mathematics] there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy.
G. H. Hardy
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The fact is there are few more popular subjects than mathematics. Most people have some appreciation of mathematics, just as most people can enjoy a pleasant tune.
G. H. Hardy
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The study of mathematics is, if an unprofitable, a perfectly harmless and innocent occupation.
G. H. Hardy
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A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.
G. H. Hardy
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A man who sets out to justify his existence and his activities has to distinguish two different questions. The first is whether the work which he does is worth doing and the second is why he does it (whatever its value may be).
G. H. Hardy
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Perhaps five or even ten per cent of men can do something rather well. It is a tiny minority who can do anything really well, and the number of men who can do two things well is negligible. If a man has any genuine talent, he should be ready to make almost any sacrifice in order to cultivate it to the full.
G. H. Hardy
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A month's intelligent instruction in the theory of numbes ought to be twice as instructive, twice as useful, and at least 10 times as entertaining as the same amount of 'calculus for engineers'.
G. H. Hardy
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I propose to put forward an apology for mathematics and I may be told that it needs none, since there are now few studies more generally recognized, for good reasons or bad, as profitable and praiseworthy.
G. H. Hardy
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As Littlewood said to me once [of the ancient Greeks], they are not clever school boys or scholarship candidates, but Fellows of another college.
G. H. Hardy
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I wrote a great deal during the next ten [early] years,but very little of any importance there are not more than four or five papers which I can still remember with some satisfaction.
G. H. Hardy