Background
Eric Temple Bell was born on February 7, 1883, in Aberdeen, Scotland. He was the younger son of James Bell, of a London commercial family, and Helen Lyndsay Lyall, whose family were classical scholars.
1931
Drawing of Eric Temple Bell
Eric Temple Bell (February 7, 1883 – December 21, 1960) was a Scottish-born mathematician and science fiction writer.
University of London, London, England, United Kingdom
Bell attended the University of London and graduated in 1902 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States
From 1902 to 1904 Bell studied at Stanford University and graduated with a Master of Arts degree in two years.
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States
Bell spent a single year at the University of Washington netted a Master of Arts in 1908.
Columbia University, New York, New York, United States
Bell graduated from Columbia University where he received his Ph.D. degree in 1912.
(The central topic of this book is the presentation of the...)
The central topic of this book is the presentation of the author's principle of arithmetical paraphrases, which won him the Bocher Prize in 1924. This general principle served to unify and extend many isolated results in the theory of numbers.
https://www.amazon.com/Algebraic-Arithmetic-Colloquium-Publications-Eric/dp/0821846019/?tag=2022091-20
1927
Eric Temple Bell was born on February 7, 1883, in Aberdeen, Scotland. He was the younger son of James Bell, of a London commercial family, and Helen Lyndsay Lyall, whose family were classical scholars.
Bell was tutored before entering the Bedford Modem School, where a remarkable teacher, E. M. Langley, inspired his lifelong interest in elliptic functions and number theory. He then attended the University of London and graduated in 1902 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
After Bell migrated to the United States in 1902, he was able to “cover all the mathematics offered” at Stanford and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in two years. A single year at the University of Washington netted a Master of Arts in 1908; another at Columbia sufficed for the Ph.D. in 1912.
Bell migrated to the United States in 1902 “to escape being shoved into Woolwich or the India Civil Service” (as he later explained) and studied in the number of universities. The years between studies he spent as a ranch hand, mule skinner, surveyor, school teacher, and partner in an unsuccessful telephone company.
Bell produced about 250 mathematical research papers, four learned books, eleven popularizations, and, as “John Taine,” seventeen science fiction novels, many short stories, and some poetry. At the University of Washington from 1912, Bell published a number of significant contributions on numerical functions, analytic number theory, multiply periodic functions, and Diophantine analysis.
After lecturing at Chicago and Harvard, he went, in 1926, to the California Institute of Technology, where he remained (emeritus after 1953) until hospitalized a year before his death.
(The central topic of this book is the presentation of the...)
1927Bell was active in organizations of research mathematicians, teachers, and authors. In religion and politics he was an individualist and uncompromising iconoclast.
Quotations:
“Time makes fools of us all. Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us.”
“Strange as it may seem, not all of the great mathematicians have been professors in colleges or universities. Quite a few were soldiers by profession; others went into mathematics from theology, the law, and medicine, and one of the greatest was as crooked a diplomat as ever lied for the good of his country. A few have had no profession at all. Stranger yet, not all professors of mathematics have been mathematicians. But this should not surprise us when we think of the gulf between the average professor of poetry drawing a comfortable salary and the poet starving to death in his garret.”
“The hippopotamus is said to have a tender heart by those who have eaten that delicacy baked, so a thick skin is not necessarily a reliable index to what is inside the man.”
“This queer crotchet [of Hamilton's] that algebra is the science of pure time has attracted many philosophers, and quite recently it has been exhumed and solemnly dissected by owlish metaphysicians seeking the philosopher's stone in the gall bladder of mathematics.”
“Any impatient student of mathematics or science or engineering who is irked by having algebraic symbolism thrust on him should try to get on without it for a week.”
“Obvious" is the most dangerous word in mathematics.”
“The predatory barons, kings, and princelings of the Middle Ages had bred a swarm of rulers with the political ethics of highway robbers and, for the most part, the intellects of stable boys.”
Bell was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (vice president section A, 1930) and of the American Mathematics Society (council, 1924-1927). He was also a member of the Mathematical Association of America where he also served as president from 1931 to 1933.
Bell remained active in retirement and was writing his last book in the hospital when overtaken by a fatal heart attack.
In 1910 Eric Temple married Jessie L. Brown, who died in 1940. They had one son, Taine Temple Bell, who became a physician in Watsonville.