I remember once going to see him [Ramanujan] when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi-cab No. 1729, and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavourable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two different ways."
Interpretation
The quote highlights the unexpected significance found in seemingly dull or ordinary things.
In this quote, G. H. Hardy shares an encounter with the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who turned what Hardy considered an uninteresting taxi cab number, 1729, into a fascinating mathematical subject. This demonstrates how perspectives can transform our understanding and appreciation of even the most mundane aspects of life by revealing hidden beauty and complexity.
In practice
In a lecture on the importance of perspective in mathematics.
A chess problem is genuine mathematics, but it is in some way "trivial" mathematics. However, ingenious and intricate, however original and surprising the moves, there is something essential lacking. Chess problems are unimportant. The best mathematics is serious as well as beautiful-"important" if you like, but the word is very ambiguous, and "serious" expresses what I mean much better.
Mathematics is not a contemplative but a creative subject; no one can draw much consolation from it when he has lost the power or the desire to create; and that is apt to happen to a mathematician rather soon. It is a pity, but in that case he does not matter a great deal anyhow, and it would be silly to bother about him.
Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.
It is hardly possible to maintain seriously that the evil done by science is not altogether outweighed by the good. For example, if ten million lives were lost in every war, the net effect of science would still have been to increase the average length of life.
Real mathematics must be justified as art if it can be justified at all.
If intellectual curiosity, professional pride, and ambition are the dominant incentives to research, then assuredly no one has a fairer chance of gratifying them than a mathematician.
We're only human, we're supposed to make mistakes.
Only when we accept and forgive all that is or has been the good, the bad, and the ugly of our human lives can we get off the guilt trip and back into the flow. That means we must love our humanness and all of our failings; we must accept, learn from, and yes, even love our mistakes.
Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow.
Chance favours a prepared mind.
This ability to exist in pieces is what some adults call resilience. And I suppose in some way it is a kind of resilience, a horrible resilience that makes adults believe children forget trauma.
An active mind cannot exist in an inactive body.
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