I don't suppose that applies so much to other physicists; I think it’s a peculiarity of myself that I like to play about with equations, just looking for beautiful mathematical relations which maybe don’t have any physical meaning at all. Sometimes they do.

— Paul Dirac, Interview with Dr. P. A. M. Dirac (1963)

Source: http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4575_3.html

Interview by Thomas S. Kuhn at Dirac's Cambridge home, May 7, 1963.

Topics: creativity, mathematics