Quote preview background for G.H. Hardy
No mathematician should ever allow him to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game. _ Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who have done great work later; _ [but] I do not know of a single instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty. _ A mathematician may still be competent enough at sixty, but it is useless to expect him to have original ideas.
G.H. Hardy A Mathematician's Apology
Turn into a Quote Card

Quote Detail

No mathematician should ever allow him to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game. _ Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who have done great work later; _ [but] I do not know of a single instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty. _ A mathematician may still be competent enough at sixty, but it is useless to expect him to have original ideas.

Quick Answer

What this quote page tells you

This canonical quote page keeps the full saying, the attributed author, any linked work, and the topic tags together so the quote can be cited from one stable URL.

Related Quotes

More quote cards from the same area

"

Had Moreau had any intelligible object, I could have sympathized at least a little with him. I am not so squeamish about pain as that. I could have forgiven him a little even, had his motive been only hate. But he was so irresponsible, so utterly careless! His curiosity, his mad, aimless investigations, drove him on; and the Things were thrown out to live a year or so, to struggle and blunder and suffer, and at last to die painfully.

"

This 'web of discourses' as Robyn called it...is as much a biological product as any of the other constructions to be found in the animal world. (Clothes too, are part of the extended phenotype of Homo Sapiens almost every niche inhabited by that species.An illustrated encyclopedia of zoology should no more picture Homo Sapiens naked than it should picture Ursus arctus-the black bear- wearing a clown suit and riding a bicycle.