Godfrey Harold Hardy was one of the foremost mathematicians in England during the early part of the twentieth century. He was primarily a pure mathematician, specializing in branches of mathematics that study the behavior of numbers (such as number theory and analysis). He also made important contributions to areas of applied mathematics, and is known for formulating the Hardy-Weinberg law of population genetics. He taught at both Cambridge and Oxford and published over three hundred-fifty research papers, either alone or in collaboration with other mathematicians--most notably John Edensor Littlewood and S. I. Ramanujan.
Born in Cranleigh, England, Hardy was the elder of two children of Isaac and Sophia Hall Hardy. Both his parents came from poor families and were unable to afford university education for themselves, but they were people with a taste for intellectual and cultural pursuits and had made a place for themselves as schoolteachers. Hardy's father was the geography and drawing master at Cranleigh School, where he also gave singing lessons, edited the school magazine, and played soccer. His mother taught piano lessons there and helped run a boarding house for the younger students. They took great pains to educate their children well, and both Hardy and his sister Gertrude inherited their parent's love for education and the intellect. A gifted student, Hardy displayed a special talent and interest for mathematics from a very young age. When he was just two, he was writing down numbers into the millions, a common sign of future numerical ability. Rather than attend regular classes in mathematics, he was coached by a private tutor, and he completed sixth form at Cranleigh when he was only thirteen--about five years younger than the usual age--ranking second in class. He then won a prestigious scholarship to attend Winchester College, a private secondary school where he spent six years before graduating in 1896, winning another scholarship to attend Trinity College at CambridgeUniversity. Upon his graduation in 1899, Hardy was named a fellow of Trinity College at Cambridge.
As a fellow, Hardy was finally free to devote his time to pure mathematics, and he did so with great enthusiasm and fervor. Over the next ten years he produced several papers on number series that established his reputation as an analyst, and in 1908 he published a book, A Course of Pure Mathematics. This was the first mathematical textbook in the English language to explain rigorously the fundamental concepts of the subject. Until then, books and teachers had merely provided these formulae and moved on to using them in various practical applications.
Also in 1908, Hardy made his only contribution to applied mathematics in the form of a letter to the American journal Science. Mendelian genetics being the subject of much debate at that time, an article that recently appeared in The Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine had disputed some of Mendel's theories of inheritance of various traits. In his letter, Hardy used simple algebraic principles to prove the error in the article, and he set down an equation that predicted the patterns of inheritance. In the same year, a German physician named Wilhelm Weinberg devised a similar mathematical method for prediction, and the principle was named the Hardy-Weinberg law in honor of them both. Widely used in the study of the genetic transmission of blood groups and rare diseases, this law appears today as a fundamental principle of population genetics.
Hardy began his collaboration with the mathematician J. E. Littlewood in 1911. The partnership, which lasted for over thirty-five years and resulted in the publication of over one hundred papers, was described by C. P. Snow in his foreword to Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology as "the most famous collaboration in the history of mathematics. There has been nothing like it in any science or in any other field of creative activity." Some eight years younger than Hardy, Littlewood was a brilliant mathematician who had already made a name for himself in the mathematical community.
Meanwhile, Hardy was growing disenchanted with life at Cambridge, and controversies surrounding World War I had much to do with this. In his foreword to A Mathematician's Apology, Snow describes the years from 1914 to 1918 as the "dark years" for Hardy. Most of his friends were away at the war. His work with Littlewood was also suffering, as the latter had gone away to serve as a second lieutenant in the army. In 1916, Bertrand Russell, the noted philosopher, mathematician, and pacifist, was dismissed from his lectureship at Trinity for his antiwar activities. Hardy was a close personal friend of Russell's; outraged at this dismissal, he fought bitterly with many of his mathematical colleagues. In 1918, the university dismissed yet another person for their antiwar views, this time a librarian, upsetting Hardy even more, and he actively opposed the firing. Snow writes in A Mathematician's Apology that "it was the work of Ramanujan which was Hardy's solace during the bitter college quarrels."
Adding to his discontent was the fact that his duties at Cambridge were becoming increasingly administrative, leaving him little time for research. In 1919, he moved to Oxford University as Savilian Professor of Geometry at New College. Here, he reached the pinnacle of his career, setting up a flourishing research school and enjoying the best years of his collaboration with Littlewood. His flamboyance, radical antiwar views, and outspokenness were appreciated at Oxford. Hardy had an exceptional gift for working well with other people, and besides Ramanujan and Littlewood he collaborated with many other leading mathematicians of the day. He also spent one year as an exchange professor at Princeton University. In 1931, he returned to Cambridge as Sadleirian Professor of Pure Mathematics. He retired in 1942, after which he continued to live in his rooms at Trinity. Shortly before his death in 1947, the Royal Society awarded him their highest honor, the Copley Medal.
Hardy was intensely fond of sports, particularly cricket. He followed cricket matches and scores with great attention. Hardy was not above bringing his passion for cricket into the classroom, describing the quality of mathematical work he considered exceptionally good to be in the "Bradman" or "Hobbs" class. As both men were cricketeers, not mathematicians, such references were apt to confuse unsuspecting students. To the end of his days he remained passionately interested in cricket, and when he died he was listening to his sister read to him from a book on the history of Cambridge University cricket.
Hardy was also a talented writer. He was often called upon to write obituaries of famous mathematicians. In addition to numerous mathematical texts, he also wrote Bertrand Russell and Trinity, a recounting of the wartime controversy, and A Mathematician's Apology, a treatise describing his love for the subject.
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