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G H Hardy's interests covered many topics of pure mathematics:- Diophantine analysis; summation of divergent series; Fourier series; the Riemann zeta function; and the distribution of primes.
Hardy could not endure having his photograph taken and only five snapshots are known to exist. He also hated mirrors and his first action on entering any hotel room was to cover any mirror with a towel.
From 1906 to 1919 Hardy lectured at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1919 he was appointed to the Savilian chair of geometry at Oxford. In 1931 he returned to Cambridge as Sadleirian professor of pure mathematics.
Hardy published a long series of papers with J E Littlewood beginning in 1911 and lasting 35 years.
Hardy's interests covered many topics of pure mathematics:- Diophantine analysis, summation of divergent series, Fourier series, the Riemann zeta function, and the distribution of primes.
Even more remarkable was Hardy's collaboration with Ramanujan. Hardy instantly spotted Ramanujan's genius from a manuscript sent to him from Ramanujan from India. Two other top class mathematicians had previously failed to spot the genius. Hardy brought Ramanujan to Cambridge and they wrote 5 remarkable papers together.
Hardy was a pure mathematician who hoped his mathematics could never be applied. However in 1908, near the beginning of his career he gave a law describing the proportions of dominant and recessive genetic traits would be propagated in a large population. Hardy considered it unimportant but it has proved of major importance in blood group distribution.
Hardy's book A mathematicians apology was written in 1940. It is one of the most vivid descriptions of how a mathematician thinks and the pleasure of mathematics.
The following quotation from Hardy gives a clear idea of his thoughts on mathematics.
The mathematician's pattern's, like those of the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful, the ideas, like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. There is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.
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