# Doron Zeilberger

Doron Zeilberger (דורון ציילברגר; born July 2, 1950, in Israel) is an Israeli mathematician, known for his work in combinatorics.

## Quotes

* Mathematics my foot! Algorithms are mathematics too, and often more interesting and definitely more useful.
** The Narrow-Minded and Ignorant Referee's Report [and Zeilberger's Response] of Zeilberger's Paper "Automaric CounTilings" that was rejected by Helene Barcelo and the Members of the Advisory Board [that includes(!) Enumeration Expert Mireille Bousquet-Melou] of the Journal of Combinatorial Theory-Series A.
* Programming is much much harder than doing mathematics.
** The Narrow-Minded and Ignorant Referee's Report [and Zeilberger's Response] of Zeilberger's Paper "Automaric CounTilings" that was rejected by Helene Barcelo and the Members of the Advisory Board [that includes(!) Enumeration Expert Mireille Bousquet-Melou] of the Journal of Combinatorial Theory-Series A.
* Regardless of whether or not God exists, God has no place in mathematics, at least in my book.
** An Enquiry Concerning Human (and Computer!) [Mathematical] Understanding C.S. Calude, ed., "Randomness & Complexity, from Leibniz to Chaitin", World Scientific, Singapore, (October 2007)
* Algorithms existed for at least five thousand years, but people did not know that they were algorithmizing. Then came Turing (and Post and Church and Markov and others) and formalized the notion.
** An Enquiry Concerning Human (and Computer!) [Mathematical] Understanding C.S. Calude, ed., "Randomness & Complexity, from Leibniz to Chaitin", World Scientific, Singapore, (October 2007)
* Conventional wisdom, fooled by our misleading "physical intuition", is that the real world is continuous, and that discrete models are necessary evils for approximating the "real" world, due to the innate discreteness of the digital computer.
** "Real" Analysis is a Degenerate Case of Discrete Analysis. Appeared in the book "New Progress in Difference Equations"(Proc. ICDEA 2001), edited by Bernd Aulbach, Saber Elaydi, and Gerry Ladas, and publisher by Taylor & Francis, London, 2004.
* Computer Algebra Systems are NOT the Devil but the new MESSIAH that will take us out of the current utterly trivial phase of human-made mathematics into the much deeper semi-trivial computer-generated phase of future mathematics. Even more important, Computer Algebra Systems will turn out to be much more than just a `tool', since the methodology of computer-assisted and computer-generated research will rule in the future, and will make past mathematics seem like alchemy and astrology, or, at best, theology.
* Math is perfect (in principle), but mathematicians are not (because they are humans), hence the mathematics that (human) mathematicians do is influenced by the weltanschauung of the people around them.
** Computerized Deconstruction. Appeared in Adv. Appl. Math. v. 31 (2003), 532-543.
* When a problem seems intractable, it is often a good idea to try to study "toy" versions of it in the hope that as the toys become increasingly larger and more sophisticated, they would metamorphose, in the limit, to the real thing.
** Self-Avoiding Walks, the language of science, and Fibonacci numbers. J. Stat. Inference and Planning, 54(1996), 135-138.
* The best way to learn a topic is by teaching it. Similarly the best way to understand a new proof is by writing an expository article about it.
** (1989). "Kathy O'Hara's constructive proof of the unimodality of the Gaussian polynomials". Amer. Math. Monthly 96: 592 of 590–602.
* Let me also remind you that zero, like all of mathematics, is fictional and an idealization. It is impossible to reach absolute zero temperature or to get perfect vacuum. Luckily, mathematics is a fairyland where ideal and fictional objects are possible.
** "         " (nothing) published in the Personal Journal of Shalosh B. Ekhad and Doron Zeilberger

### Opinions

* Many of the successes of `fancy' mathematics are due to sociological and linguistic reasons. They are really high-school-algebra arguments in disguise. Once you strip the fancy verbiage off, what remains is a bare (and much prettier, in my eyes) argument in high-school mathematics, or at most, in Freshman linear-algebra and (formal!) Calculus. For example, I am (almost) sure that Wiles's proof would be expressible in simple language, and if not, there would be a much nicer proof that would.
** from "Doron Zeilberger's 5th Opinion", Dr. Z's Homepage
* Mathematics is so useful because physical scientists and engineers have the good sense to largely ignore the "religious" fanaticism of professional mathematicians, and their insistence on so-called rigor, that in many cases is misplaced and hypocritical, since it is based on "axioms" that are completely fictional, i.e. those that involve the so-called infinity.
** from "Doron Zeilberger's 126th Opinion", Dr. Z's Homepage

## External links

* Doron Zeilberger's homepage
* Profile at ScienceWorld