Godfrey Harold Hardy (7 February 1877 – 1 December 1947) was an English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis. In biology, he is known for the Hardy–Weinberg principle, a basic principle of population genetics. Hardy is famed for his 1940 essay A Mathematician's Apology, often considered one of the best insights into the mind of a working mathematician written for the layperson. The novelist Graham Greene ranked it with the notebooks of Henry James as "the best account of what it was like to be a creative artist."
Starting in 1914, Hardy was the mentor of the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, a relationship that has become celebrated. Hardy almost immediately recognised Ramanujan's extraordinary albeit untutored brilliance, and Hardy and Ramanujan became close collaborators. When asked by a young Paul Erdős what his greatest contribution to mathematics was, Hardy unhesitatingly replied that it was the discovery of Ramanujan. He remarked that on a scale of mathematical ability, his ability would be 25, Littlewood would be 30, Hilbert would be 80, and Ramanujan would be 100. In a lecture on Ramanujan, Hardy said that "my association with him is the one romantic incident in my life".
Biography G. H. Hardy was born on 7 February 1877, in Cranleigh, Surrey, England, into a teaching family. His father was Bursar and Art Master at Cranleigh School; his mother had been a senior mistress at Lincoln Training College for teachers. Both of his parents were mathematically inclined, though neither had a university education. He and his sister Gertrude "Gertie" Emily Hardy (1878–1963) were brought up by their educationally enlightened parents in a typical Victorian nursery attended by a nurse. At an early age, he argued with his nurse about the existence of Santa Claus and the efficacy of prayer. He read aloud to his sister books such as Don Quixote, Gulliver's Travels, and Robinson Crusoe. Hardy's own natural affinity for mathematics was perceptible at an early age. When just two years old, he wrote numbers up to millions, and when taken to church he amused himself by factorising the numbers of the hymns. After schooling at Cranleigh, Hardy was awarded a scholarship to Winchester College for his mathematical work. In 1896, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge. He was first tutored under Robert Rumsey Webb, but found it unsatisfying, and briefly considered switching to history. He then was tutored by Augustus Love, who recommended that he read Camille Jordan's Cours d'analyse, which taught him for the first time "what mathematics really meant". After only two years of preparation under his coach, Robert Alfred Herman, Hardy was fourth in the Mathematics Tripos examination. Years later, he sought to abolish the Tripos system, as he felt that it was becoming more an end in itself than a means to an end. While at university, Hardy joined the Cambridge Apostles, an elite, intellectual secret society. Hardy cited as his most important influence his independent study of Cours d'analyse de l'École polytechnique, through which he became acquainted with the more precise mathematics tradition in continental Europe. In 1900 he passed part II of the Tripos, and in the same year he was elected to a Prize Fellowship at Trinity College. In 1903 he earned his M.A., which was the highest academic degree at English universities at that time. When his Prize Fellowship expired in 1906 he was appointed to the Trinity staff as a lecturer in mathematics, where teaching six hours per week left him time for research. On 16 January 1913, Ramanujan wrote to Hardy, who Ramanujan had known from studying Orders of Infinity (1910). Hardy read the letter in the morning, suspected it was a crank or a prank, but thought it over and realized in the evening that it was likely genuine because "great mathematicians are commoner than thieves or humbugs of such incredible skill". He then invited Ramanujan to Cambridge and began "the one romantic incident in my life". In the aftermath of the Bertrand Russell affair during World War I, in 1919 he left Cambridge to take the Savilian Chair of Geometry (and thus become a Fellow of New College) at Oxford. Hardy spent the academic year 1928–1929 at Princeton University in an academic exchange with Oswald Veblen, who spent the year at Oxford. Hardy gave the Josiah Willard Gibbs lecture for 1928. Hardy left Oxford and returned to Cambridge in 1931, becoming again a fellow of Trinity College and holding the Sadleirian Professorship until 1942. It is believed that he left Oxford for Cambridge to avoid the compulsory retirement at 65. He was on the governing body of Abingdon School from 1922 to 1935. In 1939, he suffered a coronary thrombosis, which prevented him from playing tennis, squash, etc. He also lost his creative powers in mathematics. He was constantly bored and distracted himself by writing a privately circulated memoir about the Bertrand Russell affair. In the early summer of 1947, he attempted suicide by barbiturate overdose. After that, he resolved to simply wait for death. He died suddenly one early morning while listening to his sister read out from a book of the history of Cambridge University cricket.
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