David Ruelle

What is the origin of the urge, the fascination that drives physicists, mathematicians, and presumably other scientists as well? Psychoanalysis suggests that it is sexual curiosity. You start by asking where little babies come from, one thing leads to another, and you find yourself preparing nitroglycerine or solving differential equations. This explanation is somewhat irritating, and therefore probably basically correct.

__ David Ruelle, in Chance and Chaos

Deborah Tepper Haimo

In other days, mathematics was described, on the one hand, as the Queen of the Sciences and, on the other, as the Handmaiden of the Sciences. It would thus appear that there is no question about the gender of mathematics, merely uncertainty about her social status.

__ Deborah Tepper Haimo, in Commentaries on Mathematics and Science Standards, Occasional Paper No. 3, National Institute for Science Education, 1997