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‘The man of science does not study nature because it is useful but because he enjoys it, and he enjoys it because it is beautiful. […] I am not speaking here of the beauty that strikes the senses, the beauty of qualities and appearances; not that I do not care for them, far from it, but they have nothing to do with science; what I am referring to is the more intimate beauty that comes from the harmonious ordering of the parts in the whole, which, when perceived and understood, offers deep satisfaction to a pure intelligence.’ That is how mathematicians, often considered to be cold and calculating, generally speak of their work in terms of aesthetics, vaunting the beauty of a theorem or the elegance of a proof.