A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia NasarMy rating: 0 of 5 stars
Many mathematicians, most famously the French genius Henri Poincaré, have testified to the value of leaving a partially solved problem alone for a while and letting the unconscious work behind the scenes. In an oft-quoted passage from a 1908 about the genesis of mathematical discovery, Poincaré writes:
For fifteen days I struggled to prove that no functions analogous to those I have since called Fuchsian functions could exist. I was then very ignorant. Every day I sat down at my work table where I spent an hour or two; I tried a great number of combinations and arrived at no result....
I then left Caen where I was living at the time, to participate in a geological trip sponsored by the School of Mines. The exigencies of travel made me forget my mathematical labors; reaching Coutances we took a bus for some excursion or another. The instant I put my foot on the step the idea came to me, apparently with nothing whatever in my previous thoughts having prepared me for it.
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