UFO (2018)

Gillian Anderson: Professor Hendricks

Quotes 

• Professor Hendricks : [talking to Derek about UFO signal and conspiracy theory]  You don't automatically jump to the most extreme explanations. You analyze the reasonable ones first.

• Professor Hendricks : Chapter four. Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors. Now, if we have a square matrix "A" that represents a linear transformation, then this matrix times the vector is equal to a scalar lambda times the same vector. Now, the "v" is called an eigenvector, and the lambda is called an eigenvalue, and these kinds of problems have applications in all kinds of things, like structural engineering, and spin transitions and neutral hydrogen.

  Professor Hendricks : [after a pause]  And it has a wavelength of 21 centimeters. That would be significant, wouldn't it? Derek?

  Derek : It doesn't matter. The matrix is double, or half, or whatever.

  Professor Hendricks : Twenty-one centimeters.

  Derek : [confused]  Twenty-one centimeters, what?

  Professor Hendricks : The frequency of hydrogen. The spectral line of neutral hydrogen has a frequency of 1,420 MHz and a wavelength of 21 centimeters. Two lines, 38 increments east.

  Derek : And 22 north.

  Professor Hendricks : And then you multiply both by 9,433.

  Derek : And then by 21 centimeters. The wavelength is the unit of the measurement. It is coordinates.

• Professor Hendricks : We are servants rather than masters of Mathematics.

• Professor Hendricks : I know you think that if we stare at that signal long enough, that something is going to click, but you can't force it. And I am certainly not the person who's going to help you crack it. I mean, math, science, physics? It's a young person's game. Riemann. Galois. Einstein.

  Derek : Eugène Ehrhart was 60 when he got his PhD. The Ehrhart polynomial? Yitang Zhang was 57 when he proved that there were an infinite number of consecutive pairs of primes that were separated by less than 70 million.

  Professor Hendricks : [reluctant]  Two examples.

  Derek : Schrodinger. Frohlich. Smale.

  Professor Hendricks : [funny]  Okay! Okay!

• Professor Hendricks : You know there was a man who lived a long time ago, a brilliant man, an inventor. He took credit for other people's work. He conducted dangerous experiments with radiation that cost his assistant his arms. He even helped to create the electric chair, and he used it to kill somebody in order to prove that his competitor's technology was dangerous. His name was Thomas Edison. You strike me as that kind of person, Derek. Now don't get me wrong, I like electricity, and the world needs people like that, but I certainly wouldn't want to be friends with him.

• Derek : Sorry if I woke you guys up.

  Professor Hendricks : No you're not.

• Natalie : A lot of the best mathematicians do their best work in their early 20s; Einstein, Ramanujan...

  Professor Hendricks : Riemann, Abel, Galois, I know the list.

  Natalie : You.