I stayed away from mathematics not so much because I knew it would be hard work as because of the amount of time I knew it would take, hours spent in a field where I was not a natural.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I was never strong at maths, but I eventually got onto a university physics/astronomy course, and that led on to my Ph.D. and eventual employment.
I had changed from being a mathematician to a practicing scientist. I was increasingly embarassed that I could no longer follow some of the more modern branches of pure mathematics.
Early in my career, I wanted to be a mathematician.
I wasn't an academic. I hated maths and science at school. I couldn't concentrate.
I enjoyed mathematics from a very young age. At the beginning of college, I had this illusion, which was kind of silly in retrospect, that if I just understood math and physics and philosophy, I could figure out everything else from first principles.
I wasn't that good at science, and I gave up on math long before I should have. I like to think if I were in school today that would be different.
I spent 10 years working on a math Ph.D., and I finally got kind of good at it.
The most painful thing about mathematics is how far away you are from being able to use it after you have learned it.
I was a mathematics major and really into math.
The reason why we do maths is because it's like poetry. It's about patterns, and that really turned me on. It made me feel that maths was in tune with the other things I liked doing.