A COLLECTION OF GOOD WORDS
数学
Math
The natural world is full of irregularity and random alteration, but in the antiseptic, dust-free, shadowless, brightly lit, abstract realm of the mathematicians they like their cabbages spherical, please.
自然界充满了不规则和随机的变化，但在数学家们的防腐、无尘、无影、明亮、抽象的领域里，他们喜欢球形的卷心菜。
My background is basically scientific math. My Dad was a physicist, so I have it in my blood somewhere. Scientific method is very important to me. I think anything that contradicts it is probably not true.
我的背景基本上是科学数学。我爸爸是个物理学家，所以我天生就有这方面的天赋。科学的方法对我来说很重要。我认为任何与之相矛盾的事情都可能不是真的。
The further a mathematical theory is developed, the more harmoniously and uniformly does its construction proceed, and unsuspected relations are disclosed between hitherto separated branches of the science.
数学理论发展得越深入，它的建构就越协调一致，而且迄今为止这门科学的各个分支之间的关系也就揭示得越清楚。
I was an undergraduate at Princeton, and I was pressed by the math department to go on to graduate school. Actually they gave me fellowships that paid my way, otherwise I would not have been able to continue.
我是普林斯顿大学的本科生，数学系催我去读研究生。事实上，他们给了我奖学金来支付我的学费，否则我就不能继续下去了。
Moreover, the abundance of chemical compounds and their importance in daily life hindered the chemist from investigating the question, in what does the individuality of the atoms of different elements consist.
此外，化合物的丰富性和它们在日常生活中的重要性阻碍了化学家研究这个问题，即不同元素的原子的个性是由什么组成的。
There are two ways to teach mathematics. One is to take real pains toward creating understanding - visual aids, that sort of thing. The other is the old British style of teaching until you’re blue in the face.
教数学有两种方法。其中之一是为创造理解而付出真正的努力——视觉辅助，诸如此类的东西。另一种是老式的英式教学，直到你脸色发青。
If one looks at the different problems of the integral calculus which arise naturally when one wishes to go deep into the different parts of physics, it is impossible not to be struck by the analogies existing.
当一个人想要深入研究物理学的不同部分时，自然会产生不同的积分问题。
Crystals grew inside rock like arithmetic flowers. They lengthened and spread, added plane to plane in an awed and perfect obedience to an absolute geometry that even stones - maybe only the stones - understood.
水晶像算术花一样生长在岩石里。它们伸展开来，以一种敬畏的、完美的服从绝对几何学的方式，在平面上增加平面，甚至连石头——也许只有石头——也能理解这种几何学。
The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?
构建数学模型的通常科学方法不能回答为什么模型要描述一个宇宙的问题。为什么宇宙要如此麻烦地存在?
It is hard to rationalise or explain why you love what you love. But I have always been interested in science and maths, and in high school I was struck that you could use maths to understand nature and science.
很难给自己的爱找个合理的解释。但我一直对科学和数学感兴趣，在高中时，我很惊讶地发现你可以用数学来理解自然和科学。
At the head of these new discoveries and insights comes the establishment of the facts that electricity is composed of discrete particles of equal size, or quanta, and that light is an electromagnetic wave motion.
这些新发现和新见解的核心是建立了这样一个事实:电是由大小相等的离散粒子(或称量子)组成的，而光是电磁波运动。
I'm sure that some of them will be very hard and I'll have a sense of achievement again, but nothing will mean the same to me - there's no other problem in mathematics that could hold me the way that this one did.
我相信其中一些会很难，我将再次有成就感，但没有什么对我来说是一样的-没有其他数学问题能像这个问题一样让我坚持下去。
KEEP EXPLORING
沿着这个主题，再读几句。
Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness.
现在的创造性数学家和过去一样，只受他们对对称性、简明性和普遍性的感觉以及对事物适应性的一种无法定义的感觉的指导，他们受到数学艺术的启发，而不是受到任何最终有用的前景的启发。
If mathematics is to be understood widely, we need to emphasise its elegance and its applications. Sometimes it seems that universities want to emphasise how difficult it is!
要使数学得到广泛的理解，我们需要强调它的优雅及其应用。有时候，大学似乎想强调这是多么困难!
One can imagine that the ultimate mathematician is one who can see analogies between analogies.
可以想象，最终的数学家是一个能在类比之间看到类比的人。
I like physics. I think it is the best science out of all three of them, because generally it's more useful. You learn about speed and velocity and time, and that's all clever stuff.
我喜欢物理。我认为这是三者中最好的科学，因为一般来说它更有用。你学习速度，速度和时间，这些都是很聪明的东西。
Pure mathematicians just love to try unsolved problems - they love a challenge.
纯粹的数学家只是喜欢尝试未解决的问题——他们喜欢挑战。