Friedrich Schiller's (1759–1805) poem ‘Archimedes and the Student’ (see 1st attached image for typeset text):
To Archimedes came an inquisitive youth
“Initiate me,” he said to him, “into the divine science,
That bore such splendid fruit for the nation
And shielded the walls of the city from the sambuca!”
“Divine you call the science? It is,” replied the sage,
“But it was so, my son, even before it served the state.
If you want only fruit from her, even mortals can provide it;
Who courts the goddess, seeks not in her the woman.”
(The sambuca was a ship-mounted siege engine; see 2nd attached image. During the Roman siege of Syracuse, it failed in the face of the war-machines designed by Archimedes.)
In 1808, Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) became director of the observatory at Göttingen and in his inaugural lecture declared that mathematics in general and astronomy in particular had a value — at least in part aesthetic — that was prior to and independent of any utility:
‘The happy great minds who created and expanded astronomy as well as the other beautiful parts of mathematics were certainly not inspired by the prospect of future use: they searched the truth for its own sake and found in the very success of their efforts their reward and their happiness. I cannot avoid at this point reminding you of ARCHIMEDES […]. You must all know the beautiful poem by SCHILLER.’
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[Each day of February, I am posting a short interesting story/image/fact/anecdote related to the aesthetics of mathematics.]
