Fourier is a mathematical poem.

[Referring to Fourier's mathematical theory of the conduction of heat] ... Fourier's great mathematical poem ...

— Lord Kelvin

“… Fourier 's great mathematical poem ... { Referring to Joseph Fourier 's mathematical theory of the conduction of heat, one of the precursors to thermodynamics. }”

— Anonymous

Fourier's theorem is not only one of the most beautiful results of modern analysis, but it may be said to furnish an indispensable instrument…

— Lord Kelvin

Mathematics is the only good metaphysics.

— Lord Kelvin

“Fourier succeeded in proving a theorem concerning sine waves which astonished his, at first, incredulous contemporaries. He showed that any variation of a quantity…

— John Robinson Pierce

The vision shared by both [French utopian] Charles Fourier and Robert Owen was for an entire town to fit into one structure. Owen's design…

— Christine Jennings

A clever graduate student could teach Fourier something new, but surely no one claims that he could teach Archimedes to reason better.

— Paul Halmos

For Dostoevsky, Fourier is one of the industrious ant-hill engineers, busy, protected by the delusion that his goal, the will-ordered society, is the summation…

— John Carroll

Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's Utopias should all be outdone, and…

— William James

Fourier's theorem has all the simplicity and yet more power than other familiar explanations in science. Stated simply, any complex pattern, whether in time…

— Bruce Hood

“ Derrière la série de Fourier , d'autres séries analogues sont entrées dans la domaine de l'analyse; elles y sont entrees par la même…

— Henri Poincaré

The mathematical thermology created by Fourier may tempt us to hope that, as he has estimated the temperature of the space in which we…

— Auguste Comte

The whole aspect of the universe changes with this new conception. The idea of force governing the world, of pre-established law, preconceived harmony, disappears…

— Peter Kropotkin

The fatal flaw of most utopian visions is that they're fundamentally static, and that's not a comfortable place for humans to live. Fourier was…

— Christine Jennings

True greatness is when your name is like ampere, watt, and fourier-when it's spelled with a lower case letter.

— Richard Hamming