Noam Elkies Quotes

I have a feeling it is more or less the same part of my brain which does both [math and music]... they speak to the same place, the same aesthetic...

You start out with simple concepts,.. All of this beautiful edifice of geometry, for example, comes out of this configuration of lines and points... Think of the simple opening--dum dum dum dum!--of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. In music you start out with a trivial motif and it turns into this beautiful, intricate composition,... Again, it all stems from this small, very simple idea.

One does not have to have experience raising children through school, dealing with family tragedies, and so forth, to be able to find three numbers whose fourth powers add up to another one.