G.H. Hardy

British mathematician (1877–1947)
(Redirected from Godfrey Hardy)

Geff Harold Hardy FRS (7 February 1877 Cranleigh, Surrey – 1 December 1947 Cambridge, Cambridgeshire)[1][2] was a famous English mathematician. He investigated number theory and mathematical analysis.

G.H. Hardy
G.H. Hardy
Born(1877-02-07)7 February 1877
Cranleigh, Surrey, England
Died1 December 1947(1947-12-01) (aged 70)
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England
NationalityBritish
CitizenshipBritish
Scientific career
InstitutionsTrinity College, Cambridge

Hardy's classic text A course of pure mathematics was first published in 1908 and has been in print ever since. He wrote A Mathematician's Apology in 1940.[3]

In 1908, unable to explain how a dominant gene would not become ubiquitous in a population, Reginald Punnett introduced his problem to Hardy, with whom he played cricket. Hardy went on to formulate what became known as the Hardy–Weinberg law.[4][5]

Hardy had a long collaboration with J.E. Littlewood, which resulted in a partial solution to a famous unsolved problem in number theory:

"There are infinitely many primes p such that p+2 is also prime".

Hardy discovered the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who was a brilliant student. Hardy saw his extraordinary intelligence and they worked together on many mathematical subjects. In an interview given to Paul Erdős, Hardy said that the discovery of Ramanujan was his (Hardy's) greatest contribution to mathematics and that their collaboration was "the one romantic incident in my life".

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  1. GRO Register of Births: MAR 1877 2a 147 HAMBLEDON - Godfrey Harold Hardy
  2. GRO Register of Deaths: DEC 1947 4a 204 CAMBRIDGE - Godfrey H. Hardy, aged 70
  3. G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology, Cambridge University Press (1940). 153 pages. ISBN 0-521-42706-1.
  4. Hardy G.H. (1908). "Mendelian proportions in a mixed population". Science. 28 (706): 49–50. Bibcode:1908Sci....28...49H. doi:10.1126/science.28.706.49. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17779291.
  5. Edwards A.W.F. 2008. G.H. Hardy (1908) and Hardy–Weinberg Equilibrium. Genetics, 179, 1143–1150.