Mathematical Excitement—The Most Effective Motivation

Abstract

Have you never seen a lovely pattern, a beautiful theorem, or an elegant proof. I feel sure that you have and that it was these very things that first attracted your interest and caused you to pursue your studies in mathematics. As Henri Poincaré (Stewart 1952, p. 187), the French mathematician and philosopher, once remarked, “Every scientist worthy of the name, but above all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same sensations as an artist; his pleasures are as great and of the same nature.” And Karl Weier-strass (Smith 1947, p. 1), the great German analyst, once wrote that “a mathematician who is not somewhat of a poet will never be a perfect mathematician.” In the same vein. W. F. White (Stewart 1952. p. 162) aptly penned the following: “The beautiful has its place in mathematics for here are triumphs of the creative imagination, beautiful theorems, proofs, and processes whose perfection of form has made them classic. He must be a ‘practical’ man who can see no poetry in mathematics.”