Quotations

Eliakim Moore


View the biography of Eliakim Moore


We lay down a fundamental principle of generalization by abstraction:
"The existence of analogies between central features of various theories implies the existence of a general theory which underlies the particular theories and unifies them with respect to those central features...."
Quoted in H Eves Mathematical Circles Revisited (Boston 1971).
A quotation by H E Slaught:
...Moore was presenting a paper on a highly technical topic to a large gathering of faculty and graduate students from all parts of the country. When half way through he discovered what seemed to be an error (though probably no one else in the room observed it). He stopped and re-examined the doubtful step for several minutes and then, convinced of the error, he abruptly dismissed the meeting -- to the astonishment of most of the audience. It was an evidence of intellectual courage as well as honesty and doubtless won for him the supreme admiration of every person in the group -- an admiration which was in no wise diminished, but rather increased, when at a later meeting he announced that after all he had been able to prove the step to be correct.
In The American Mathematical Monthly, 40 (1933), 191-195.