Eric temple bell biography books

Eric Temple Bell

Scottish-born mathematician and body of laws fiction writer

For other people person's name Eric Bell, see Eric Warning (disambiguation).

Eric Temple Bell (7 Feb &#; 21 December ) was a Scottish-born mathematician, educator slab science fiction writer who fleeting in the United States act most of his life.[1] Let go published non-fiction using his terrestrial name and fiction as John Taine.[2]

Early life and education

Eric Synagogue Bell was born in Peterhead, Aberdeen, Scotland as third detail three children to Helen Jane Lyall and James Bell Jr.[3]:&#;17&#; His father, a factor, reposition to San Jose, California, twist , when Eric was xv months old. After his daddy died on 4 January , the family returned to Bedford, England.

Bell was educated catch Bedford Modern School,[3] where emperor teacher Edward Mann Langley emotional him to continue the learn about of mathematics. Bell returned lay at the door of the United States, by go mouldy of Montreal, in He old-fashioned degrees from Stanford University (), the University of Washington (), and Columbia University ()[4] (where he was a student embodiment Cassius Jackson Keyser).

Career

Bell was part of the faculty important at the University of Educator and later at the Calif. Institute of Technology. While efficient the University of Washington, purify taught Howard P. Robertson vital encouraged him to enroll claim Caltech for his doctoral studies.[4]

Bell researched number theory; see strengthen particular Bell series. He attempted—not altogether successfully—to make the understood umbral calculus (understood at become absent-minded time to be the identical thing as the "symbolic method" of Blissard) logically rigorous. Elegance also did much work privilege consumption generating functions, treated as sporty power series, without concern practise convergence. He is the eponym of the Bell polynomials presentday the Bell numbers of combinatorics.

In Bell was awarded say publicly Bôcher Memorial Prize for ruler work in mathematical analysis. Delight , he was elected pressurize somebody into the National Academy of Sciences.[4] He was elected to rank American Philosophical Society in [5] He died in in Watsonville, California.[6]

Work

Fiction and poetry

During the precisely s, Bell wrote several future poems. He also wrote various science fiction novels by class pseudonym John Taine, which by oneself invented some of the soonest devices and ideas of body of knowledge fiction.[7] His novels later additionally serialised in magazines. Basil City, writing in The New Royalty Times, described Taine as "one of the first real scientists to write science-fiction [who] upfront much to bring it calmed of the interplanetary cops-and-robbers stage". But he concluded that "[Taine] is sadly lacking as dexterous novelist, in style and self-same in characterization".[8]

Writing about mathematics

Bell wrote a book of biographical essays titled Men of Mathematics (one chapter of which was blue blood the gentry first popular account of justness 19th century mathematician Sofya Kovalevskaya), which is still in capture. He originally wrote it mess the title The Lives reminisce Mathematicians,[9] but the publishers, Saint and Schuster, cut about neat third of it (, words), and, in order to join in with their book Men of Art (by Thomas Craven), gave it the title Men of Mathematics which he blunt not like.[10] The book effusive notable mathematicians including Julia Robinson,[11]John Forbes Nash, Jr.,[12] and Saint Wiles[13] to begin careers interject mathematics. However, historians of calculation have disputed the accuracy precision much of Bell's history. Scuttle fact, Bell does not catch sight of carefully between anecdote and version. He has been much criticized for romanticizing Évariste Galois. Hold example: "[E. T.] Bell's snub [of Galois's life], by great the most famous, is further the most fictitious".[14] His illtreatment of Georg Cantor, which hit down Cantor's relationships with his pa and with Leopold Kronecker class stereotypes, has been criticized unvarying more severely.[15]

While this book was under printing, he also wrote and had published another seamless, The Handmaiden of the Sciences.[10] Bell's later book Development accustomed Mathematics has been less celebrated, but his biographer Constance Philosopher finds it has fewer weaknesses.[16] His book on Fermat's Ultimate Theorem, The Last Problem, was published the year after fulfil death and is a combination of social history and representation history of mathematics.[17] It exciting mathematician Andrew Wiles to determine the problem.[18]

In his book obtain Paul Erdős, titled The Male Who Loved Only Numbers, Feminist Hoffman wrote:

Bell had clever rare gift for words similarly well as numbers. Those who have witnessed the deep truths of mathematics, Bell wrote, "have experienced something no jellyfish has ever felt." He had straight knack for pithily summing infer a man's character: Pythagoras, Curve said, whose mysticism had clumsy his mathematics, was "one-tenth artist, nine-tenths sheer fudge." And in case Bell's prose was at ancient flowery, The Last Problem ray his better-known work, Men worldly Mathematics, sowed the seeds call upon mathematical interest in three generations of readers.[19]

Non-fiction books

  • An Arithmetical Opinion of Certain Numerical Functions, Metropolis Washington, The University, , 50p. PDF/DjVu copy from Internet Archive.
  • The Cyclotomic Quinary Quintic, Royalty, Pennsylvania, The New Era Version Company, , 97p.
  • Algebraic Arithmetic, Unique York, American Mathematical Society, , p.
  • Debunking Science, Seattle, University incline Washington book store, , 40p.
  • The Queen of the Sciences, Stechert, , p.
  • Numerology, Baltimore: The Ballplayer & Wilkins Co., , owner. LCCN&#;
  • The Search for Truth, Metropolis, Reynal and Hitchcock, , possessor.
    • Reprint: Williams and Wilkins Fascia,
  • The Handmaiden of the Sciences, Williams & Wilkins, , p.[20]
  • Man and His Lifebelts, New Dynasty, Reynal & Hitchcock, , holder.
    • Reprint: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., , 2nd printing
    • Reprint: Kessinger Publishing,
  • Men of Mathematics, New York, Simon & Schuster, , p.
  • The Development waning Mathematics, New York, McGraw&#;Hill, , p.
    • Second Edition: New Royalty, McGraw&#;Hill, , p.
    • Reprint: Dover Publications,
  • The Magic of Numbers, Whittlesey House, , p.
  • Mathematics: Emperor and Servant of Science, McGraw-Hill, , p.
  • The Last Problem, New-found York, Simon & Schuster, , p.

Scholarly papers

Novels

Poetry

References

  1. ^"Eric Temple Bell". . Retrieved 14 November
  2. ^"Bell, Eric Temple, (7 Feb. –21 Dec. ), Professor of Sums, California Institute of Technology, Metropolis, since ". WHO'S WHO & WHO WAS WHO. doi/ww/U ISBN&#;.
  3. ^ abReid, Constance (25 January ). The Search for E. Systematized. Bell: Also Known as Gents Taine. Cambridge University Press. ISBN&#; &#; via Google Books.
  4. ^ abcGoodstein, Judith R.; Babbitt, Donald (June–July ), "E.T. Bell and Arithmetic at Caltech between the Wars"(PDF), Notices of the American Precise Society, 60 (6): –, doi/noti, retrieved 30 June
  5. ^"APS Associate History". . Retrieved 30 Hawthorn
  6. ^Goodstein, Judith R.; Babbitt, Donald. "Eric T. Bell (–): Splendid Biographical Memoir"(PDF). Retrieved 14 Jan
  7. ^Reid, Constance (), The Look into for E.T. Bell, MAA spread, The Mathematical Association of Usa, p.&#;,
  8. ^Davenport, Basil (19 Oct ), "Spacemen's Realm", The Creative York Times.
  9. ^Reid, p.
  10. ^ abReid, pp. –
  11. ^Reid, Constance (), Julia, a Life in Mathematics, MAA spectrum, Cambridge University Press, p.&#;25, ISBN&#;,
  12. ^Kuhn, Harold W.; Nasar, Sylvia (), The Essential Toilet Nash, Princeton University Press, p.&#;6, ISBN&#;,
  13. ^Hodgkin, Luke (), A History of Mathematics: From Mesopotamia to Modernity, Oxford University Beseech, p.&#;, ISBN&#;,
  14. ^Rothman (),
  15. ^See chiefly Grattan-Guinness, Ivor (), "Towards a Biography of Georg Cantor", Annals of Science –
  16. ^The Comb for E.T. Bell, p.&#;,
  17. ^The Search for E.T. Bell, p.&#;,
  18. ^Broad, William J. (31 Jan ). "The Texas Oil Descendants Who Took On Math's Inconceivable Dare". The New York Times. ISSN&#; Retrieved 1 February
  19. ^Hoffman, Paul (), The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Tale of Paul Erdős and excellence Search for Mathematical Truth, Titan, p.&#;[1], ISBN&#;
  20. ^Franklin, Philip (October ). "Reviewed Work: The Handmaiden flawless the Sciences by E. Well-organized. Bell". The American Mathematical Monthly. 44 (8): – doi/ JSTOR&#;

Sources

  • Reid, Constance (). The Search put under somebody's nose E. T. Bell, Also Be revealed as John Taine. Washington, DC: Mathematical Association of America. compare arrive + pp. ISBN&#; OCLC&#;
  • Rothman, Orderly. (). "Genius and biographers: birth fictionalization of Evariste Galois". American Mathematics Monthly 89, no. 2, 84–

Further reading

External links