Mathematician:Godfrey Harold Hardy

Mathematician

English mathematician noted for his work in number theory and analysis.

Also famous for his discovery and mentorship of Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan.

Non-mathematicians remember him mainly for his book A Mathematician's Apology.

Nationality

English

History

• Born: February 7, 1877, Cranleigh, Surrey, England
• Died: December 1, 1947, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England

Theorems and Definitions

• Critical Line Theorem
• Hardy Notation
• Hardy Space
• Pisot-Vijayaraghavan Number (named for Charles Pisot and Tirukkannapuram Vijayaraghavan)
• Hardy's Inequality
• Hardy's Theorem
• Hardy-Littlewood Tauberian Theorem (with John Edensor Littlewood)
• First Hardy-Littlewood Conjecture (with John Edensor Littlewood)
• Second Hardy-Littlewood Conjecture (with John Edensor Littlewood)
• Fifth Hardy-Littlewood Conjecture (with John Edensor Littlewood)

• With Wilhelm Weinberg:
  • Hardy-Weinberg Ratio
  • Hardy-Weinberg Law (also known as Hardy-Weinberg Principle)
  • Hardy-Weinberg Equation
  • Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium

• Hardy-Hille Formula (with Carl Einar Hille)
• Hardy-Littlewood Maximal Inequality (with John Edensor Littlewood)
• Hardy-Littlewood Circle Method (with John Edensor Littlewood)
• Hardy-Ramanujan Number (with Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan)

Results named for Godfrey Harold Hardy can be found here.

Definitions of concepts named for Godfrey Harold Hardy can be found here.

Publications

• 1908: A Course of Pure Mathematics
  • 1952: A Course of Pure Mathematics, 10th ed.

• 1914: Sur les Zéros de la Fonction $\map \zeta s$ de Riemann (C.R. Acad. Sci. Vol. 158: pp. 1012 – 1014)

• 1915: The General Theory of Dirichlet's Series (with Marcel Riesz)
• 1916: The Integration of Functions of a Single Variable

• 1921: The zeros of Riemann's zeta-function on the critical line (Math. Z. Vol. 10: pp. 3 – 4) (with J.E. Littlewood)

• 1923: Some problems of ‘Partitio numerorum’; III: On the expression of a number as a sum of primes (Acta Math. Vol. 44: pp. 1 – 70) (with J.E. Littlewood)

• 1927: Collected Papers of Srinivasa Ramanujan (as editor, with P.V. Seshu Aiyar and B.M. Wilson)

• 1934: Inequalities (with J.E. Littlewood and G. Pólya)

• 1938: An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers (with E.M. Wright)
  • 1979: An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers, 5th ed. (with E.M. Wright)

• 1940: A Mathematician's Apology
• 1940: Ramanujan
• 1949: Divergent Series

• 1966: Collected papers of G.H. Hardy (including joint papers with J.E. Littlewood and others)

Notable Quotes

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

-- Quoted in the Preface to 1992: George F. Simmons: Calculus Gems

Sources

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "Godfrey Harold Hardy": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive

• 1986: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers ... (previous) ... (next): A List of Mathematicians in Chronological Sequence
• 1997: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): A List of Mathematicians in Chronological Sequence
• 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Hardy, Godfrey Harold (1877-1947)
• 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Hardy, Godfrey Harold (1877-1947)
• 2014: Christopher Clapham and James Nicholson: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Mathematics (5th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Hardy, Godfrey Harold (1877-1947)