Negativity

It is not unusual for a mathematician, having proved a theorem, to devalue the creativity that went into it. Once a theorem is proved, it is obvious, at least to its prover; it is easy to think that anybody could have done that. So this is common among mathematicians, and is sometimes referred to as impostor syndrome. What is much more unusual is for a mathematician to disown the result. One of the few cases of this was L. E. J. Brouwer; once he was converted to the philosophy of intuitionism,..