How well we all recall what the Swan of Avon wrote about the topologist:
How noble in reason !
How infinite in faculty!
In form, in moving, how express and admirable !
In action, how like an angel !
In apprehension, how like a god !
-- Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
(Actually the Bard, with a humanistic bias characteristic of his day, included geometers and arithmeticians and even physicists in this general encomium.)
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It is said that, at some point in his mathematical career, Pythagoras proclaimed himself a god.
He was right to do so.
-- David Berlinski, Infinite Ascent (2005)
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