I'm not a mathematician, but I felt really inspired reading about Alexander Grothendieck's life.
It was cool to see that a guy who felt "clumsy, even oafish, wandering painfully up an arduous track, like a dumb ox faced with an amorphous mountain of things I had to learn," unlike "the kind of bright student who wins at prestigious competitions or assimilates almost by sleight of hand, the most forbidding subjects" could become one of the 20th century's greatest mathematicians.
More paraphased quotes:
Grothendieck once described two styles in mathematics. If you think of a theorem to be proved as a nut to be cracked, then one approach is to put the cutting edge of the chisel against the shell and strike hard. If needed, begin again at many different points until the shell cracks—and you are satisfied.
For the second approach, think of immersing the nut in some softening liquid, and why not simply water? From time to time you rub so the liquid penetrates better, and otherwise you let time pass. The shell becomes more flexible through weeks and months—when the time is ripe, hand pressure is enough, the shell opens like a perfectly ripened avocado!
To Grothendieck, a problem was not truly solved until it was viewed from the "right" general perspective, from which it could be solved effortlessly, from which it became in a sense obvious, and fit naturally into a larger conceptual framework.
I'm not a mathematician, but this last bit definitely influenced the way I try to understand science.
What about you guys?
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from math http://bit.ly/2GWqGi1
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