The Primes Are The Raw Material Out

The Study Of Mathematics Is, If An Unprofitable, A Perfectly Harmless And Innocent Occupation.

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.

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.

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.

I Count Maxwell And Einstein, Eddington And Dirac, Among "real" Mathematicians. The Great Modern Achievements Of Applied Mathematics Have Been In Relativity And Quantum Mechanics, And These Subjects Are At Present At Any Rate, Almost As "useless" As The Theory Of Numbers.