John Edensor Littlewood quotes

John Edensor Littlewood was an English mathematician renowned for his groundbreaking work in analysis and number theory. His long-term collaboration with G. H. Hardy produced significant advances in mathematical scholarship. He contributed deeply to the understanding of prime numbers, inequalities, and mathematical methods. Here are 6 of his quotes:

The surprising thing about this paper is that a man who could write it--would.

John Edensor Littlewood

I recall once saying that when I had given the same lecture several times I couldn't help feeling that they really ought to know it by now.

John Edensor Littlewood

To illustrate to what extent Hardy and Littlewood in the course of the years came to be considered as the leaders of recent English mathematical research, I may report what an excellent colleague once jokingly said: 'Nowadays, there are only three really great English mathematicians: Hardy, Littlewood, and Hardy-Littlewood.

John Edensor Littlewood

It was Mr. Littlewood (I believe) who remarked that "every positive integer was one of his personal friends."

John Edensor Littlewood

I read in the proof-sheets of Hardy on Ramanujan: 'As someone said, each of the positive integers was one of his personal friends.' My reaction was, 'I wonder who said that; I wish I had.' In the next proof-sheets I read (what now stands): 'It was Littlewood who said...' (What had happened was that Hardy had received the remark in silence and with a poker face, and I wrote it off as a dud....)

John Edensor Littlewood