Godfrey Harold (G. H.) Hardy was born on February 7, 1877, in Cranleigh, Surrey, England. Both his parents were educators and possessed mathematical skills. Even before learning to speak as a very young child, he demonstrated an extraordinary IQ and performed mathematical computations to amuse himself. After winning a scholarship to Winchester College in 1889, Hardy began the rigorous training of a mathematician.

In 1896, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he trained under A. E. H. Love, who gave him his first serious conception of analysis by introducing him to Camille Jordan's Cours d'analyse. Thereafter, Hardy committed his life to mathematics, and by 1908 he had already made a significant contribution, with his greatest work in this early period being A Course of Pure Mathematics.

A watershed year for Hardy was 1911, as it marked the beginning of his thirty-five-year collaboration with fellow mathematician J. E. Littlewood. Two years later, in...