8.08.2007

Habitué à négliger les détails

Habitué à négliger les détails et à ne regarder que les cimes, il passait de l'une à l'autre avec une promptitude surprenante et les faits qu'il découvrait se groupant d'eux-mêmes autour de leur centre étaient instantanément et automatiquement classés dans sa mémoire.*
Jules Henri Poincaré (April 29, 1854 – July 17, 1912) (IPA: [pwɛ̃kaˈʀe][1]) was one of France's greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists, and a philosopher of science. Poincaré is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as 'The Last Universalist', since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime.
This is the first time I remember hearing of this fellow. It was from a Wikipedia piece about Marcel Duchamp who was interested in his work.

"The things themselves are not what science can reach..., but only the relations between things. Outside of these relations there is no knowable reality," -Poincaré

He also was essential for work on the Three Body Problem.

More at Wikipedia.

*He neglected details and jumped from idea to idea, the facts gathered from each idea would then come together and solve the problem. - Belliver, 1956

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