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How do mathematicians do it? How does anyone think creatively? Jacques
Hadamard—in the midst of war and behaviourism—set out to find the
answer by introspection and produced the classic The Mathematician’s Mind
(Princeton University Press, £9.75/$12.95, ISBN 0 691 02931 8). He
quoted Henri Poincaré; prefiguring Dawkins’s memes and himself, in 1945,
anticipated Douglas Hofstadter. He could probably lay some claim to the next
good idea about ideas to come along.