““In his wretched life of less than twenty-seven years Abel accomplished so much of the highest order that one of the leading mathematicians of the Nineteenth Century ( Hermite , 1822-1901) could say without exaggeration, ' Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for five hundred years.' Asked how he had done all this in the six or seven years of his working life, Abel replied, 'By studying the masters, not the pupils.””
![“No mathematician should ever allow him to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game. ... Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who have done great work later; ... [but] I do not…” quote by Anonymous](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/876/anonymous-1_abel_no-mathematician-should-ever-allow-him-t_651008.jpg)
![“Good, he did not have enough imagination to become a mathematician. [Upon hearing that one of his students had dropped out to study poetry]” quote by David Hilbert](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/a8a/david-hilbert-12585_humor_good-he-did-not-have-enough-imagination_1244031.jpg)
![“The full impact of the Lobachevskian method of challenging axioms has probably yet to be felt. It is no exaggeration to call Lobachevsky the Copernicus of Geometry [as did Clifford], for geometry is only a part of the vaster domain which he renovated; it might even be just to designate him as a…” quote by Eric Temple Bell](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/a75/eric-temple-bell-26465_challenges_the-full-impact-of-the-lobachevskian-met_272905.jpg)
![“[As a young teenager] Galois read [Legendre's] geometry from cover to cover as easily as other boys read a pirate yarn.” quote by Eric Temple Bell](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/377/eric-temple-bell-26465_books_as-a-young-teenager-galois-read-legendre_645854.jpg)
![“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.” quote by Eric Temple Bell](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/3f5/eric-temple-bell-26465_clear_poincar-was-the-last-man-to-take-practic_880815.jpg)
