Background
Eric Bell was born on February 7, 1883, in Aberdeen, Scotland, the son of James Bell and Helen Jane Lindsay-Lyall. His father was in the merchant marine and the son of an eminent London mercantile family.
(Dover Books, 1964. Paperback. Omnibus of three early scie...)
Dover Books, 1964. Paperback. Omnibus of three early science fiction novels.
https://www.amazon.com/Stream-Greatest-Adventure-Purple-Sapphire/dp/0486211800?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0486211800
(An integration and amplification of two earlier studies, ...)
An integration and amplification of two earlier studies, this book is equally divided between pure and applied mathematics. The author contends that the two are inseparable.
https://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-queen-servant-science-Temple/dp/B0007JNARY?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B0007JNARY
("A superb tale that every lover of science fiction will w...)
"A superb tale that every lover of science fiction will want to have around. Completely off-trail science fiction—and highly recommended therefore." -Galaxy Science Fiction This amazingly prophetic 1931 novel, which some say inspired Flowers for Algernon (on which the film Charlie was based), is easily the best novel Hugo Gernsback ever published in Amazing Stories. It features characters so mature their like would not be seen again until the post-war sf of the 1950s, and a theme that, in its rise and fall, prefigures that of "Flowers for Algernon" and carries it to a level of operatic tragedy not to be equaled until Bester's The Demolished Man. Seeds of Life, in short, is the story of Neils Bork, an alcoholic and failure raised to supernal heights of scientific genius and altruism by a scientific accident. And it is the story of what became of his golden dream of free, limitless energy for all, and of the marriage he thought would be crowned with glorious offspring. "In the unbelievably short period of six years, from 1924 to 1930, John Taine (Professor Eric Temple Bell of California Institute of Technology) drove himself to a unique .position in the science fiction world through the outrageously daring flights of the imagination which are the Taine trademark. Seeds of Life is top-notch Taine. The theme is biological—the sources of life, and of the forces which mold life. An accident remakes the blundering technician, Neils Bork, into the mutant superman, Miguel De Soto, and at the same time sets in motion other processes which attract the attention of Bork's employer, Andrew Crane, and the very competent Dr. Brown. The author keeps several mysteries at the boiling point—what has happened to Bork, to the black widow spider, to Bertha the hen; what is "De Soto's" plot against the mankind he considers degraded and degrading; what, above all, is the theory of evolution and devolution around which the whole book is built?" - Analog Science Fiction. Amazing Stories Classics is proud to bring this landmark work from the pages of the Amazing Stories Quarterly Oct 1931—with all of its original magazine illustrations—back before the reading public.
https://www.amazon.com/Seeds-Life-Amazing-Stories-Classics/dp/1500768693?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1500768693
( 2017 Reprint of 1961 Edition. Full facsimile of the or...)
2017 Reprint of 1961 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. What Eric Temple Bell calls “The Last Problem” is the problem of proving 'Fermat's Last Theorem', which Fermat wrote in the margin of a book almost 350 years ago. The original text of The Last Problem traced the problem from 2000 BC to 17th century France. Along the way we learn quite a bit about history, and just as much about mathematics. This book fits no categories. It is not a book of mathematics: it is a biography of a famous problem. Pages go by without an equation appearing. It is both a history of number theory and its place in our civilization, and a history of our civilization's relationship with mathematics. This rich and varied, wide-ranging book, written with force and vigor by someone with a distinctive style and point of view will provide hours of enjoyable reading for anyone interested in mathematics.
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Problem-Eric-Temple-Bell/dp/1684221471?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1684221471
(From one of the greatest minds in contemporary mathematic...)
From one of the greatest minds in contemporary mathematics, Professor E.T. Bell, comes a witty, accessible, and fascinating look at the beautiful craft and enthralling history of mathematics. Men of Mathematics provides a rich account of major mathematical milestones, from the geometry of the Greeks through Newton’s calculus, and on to the laws of probability, symbolic logic, and the fourth dimension. Bell breaks down this majestic history of ideas into a series of engrossing biographies of the great mathematicians who made progress possible—and who also led intriguing, complicated, and often surprisingly entertaining lives. Never pedantic or dense, Bell writes with clarity and simplicity to distill great mathematical concepts into their most understandable forms for the curious everyday reader. Anyone with an interest in math may learn from these rich lessons, an advanced degree or extensive research is never necessary.
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Eric Bell was born on February 7, 1883, in Aberdeen, Scotland, the son of James Bell and Helen Jane Lindsay-Lyall. His father was in the merchant marine and the son of an eminent London mercantile family.
Bell was educated by tutors and attended Bedford Modern School, where under the guidance of E. M. Langley he became interested in mathematics. He immigrated to the United States in 1902 to avoid "Woolrich or the India Civil Service" and in two years earned an A. B. from Stanford University. He worked as a mule skinner in Nevada, as a surveyor, and as a partner in a telephone company that went broke as a result of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, then returned to academia to receive a second A. B. from the University of Washington in 1908. There followed a short sojourn as a teacher and worker in the lumber industry of northern California. In 1912 Bell received his Ph. D. in mathematics from Columbia University.
Eric Bell began a distinguished career as a teacher and scholar at the University of Washington (1912 - 1926) and as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago (1924 - 1928) and at Harvard (1926). From 1926 until his retirement in 1953, he was a professor of mathematics at the California Institute of Technology. Bell published nearly 300 articles and edited several professional journals. In 1921 he won the Boucher Award for "Arithmetical Paraphrases, " a basic contribution to the theory of numbers (a branch of pure mathematics dealing with properties of integers). He was an authority in this as well as elliptic functions, finding solutions to important problems that had resisted solution for eighty years. Two books, Algebraic Arithmetic (1927) and The Development of Mathematics (1940), became standards in the field. He was president of the Mathematical Association of America from 1931 to 1933.
From 1930 Bell devoted much of his energy to popularizing mathematics for the layman. Men of Mathematics (1937) was devoted to relating the importance of mathematical discoveries to the men responsible. The Development of Mathematics, which brilliantly delineated the significant trends of mathematics, was filled with information and opinion without being tedious or encyclopedic. Mathematics, Queen and Servant of Science (1951) demonstrated the twin capacities of mathematics - the esoteric and the inescapably practical - and was his most sweeping attempt at popularization. The Last Problem (1961) was supposed to center around the life of the seventeenth-century French mathematician Pierre Fermat but was really an excuse for writing a history of the theory of numbers in a style that has something to offer layman and specialist alike. Bell's style was lucid and easy-flowing for such usually abstruse materials, and his insights continue to stimulate mathematicians in spite of some criticism of his fanciful flights of imagination.
Under the name of John Taine, Bell published seventeen science fiction novels noted for their violence and exciting plots. Before the Dawn (1934), published under his own name, was his favorite. It concerned dinosaurs and was inspired by statues of dinosaurs near his boyhood home in Croydon Park, near London. Together with The Time Stream (1946), it ranks among the most popular science fiction works of its time. Bell excused his writing of science fiction by stating "that if this made money for publishers, some publishers might be interested in more serious works. " Another statement in which he said that he wrote for recreation may be closer to the truth. He also produced a volume of poetry. After his retirement in 1953, Bell continued to be active in serious research. He died in Watsonville, California.
(An integration and amplification of two earlier studies, ...)
("A superb tale that every lover of science fiction will w...)
(From one of the greatest minds in contemporary mathematic...)
( 2017 Reprint of 1961 Edition. Full facsimile of the or...)
(Dover Books, 1964. Paperback. Omnibus of three early scie...)
On December 24, 1910, Eric Bell married Jessie Lillian Smith Brown, a widow. They had one son.