“Poincaré [was] the last man to take practically all mathematics, pure and applied, as his province. … Few mathematicians have had the breadth of philosophic vision that Poincaré had, and none in his superior in the gift of clear exposition.
It is generally believed that it would be impossible for any human being starting to-day to understand comprehensively, much less do creative work of high quality in more than two of the four main divisions of mathematics – arithmetic, algebra, geometry, analysis, to say nothing of astronomy and mathematical physics.
Childhood days:
Owing partly to his mother’s constant care, Poincare’s mental development as a child was extremely rapid. He learned to talk very early, but also very badly at first because he thought more rapidly than he could get the words out. From infancy his motor co-ordination was poor. When he learned to write it was discovered that he was ambidextrous and that he could write or draw as badly with his left hand as with his right.
Mathematical Discovery
The genesis of mathematical discovery, he [Poincare] says, is a problem which should interest psychologists intensely, for it is the activity in which the human mind seems to borrow least from the external world, and by understanding the process of mathematical thinking we may hope to reach what is most essential in the human mind.
[Y]oung Poincare, like Gauss, was overwhelmed by the host of ideas which besieged his mind but, unlike Gauss, his motto was not ‘Few, but ripe’.
‘Mathematical discoveries, small or great ... are never born of spontaneous generation. They always presuppose a soil seeded with preliminary knowledge andwell prepared by labour, both conscious and subconscious.’
Did you know?
When the physicist Albert Einstein applied to be a professor at ETH Zurich in 1911, ETH was reportedly not convinced of his suitability – even though he was already an established professor at Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. What ultimately helped his case were letters of recommendation (LoRs) from two famous scientists, Henri Poincaré and Marie Curie.
My recent copy (vol.2)…
To read more about Poincare and the other famous mathematicians… CHECK THIS OUT…
Update (2Nov2022):
My friend Krishnan wrote:
You perhaps forgot to share the link for the Poincaré article. An interesting bit: Poincaré was born in Nancy, France and the science/tech university there was named Université Henri Poincaré until 2012 after which all universities in the Lorraine region were combined to form Université de Lorraine. And yeah, I have a PhD from Université de Lorraine.
When I joined my PhD, there were still email IDs of some people that had uhp.fr rather than univ-lorraine.fr like mine did. This was one of my pet peeves that the name was so cool and I wish I had joined PhD some time ago...
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