This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes And References
J. Tattersall and S. McMurran, “An interview with Dame Mary L. Cartwright, D.B.E., F.R.S.,” The College Mathematics Journal, 32, no. 4 (2001), 242–254.
Wrinch left her papers, comprising 30 boxes, to the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.
M. Senechal, “A Prophet Without Honor,” Smith College Alumnae Quarterly, 1978; M. Senechal (ed), Structures of Matter and Patterns in Science, Schenkman Publishing Co., 1978.
Pun intended—Wrinch was called “Dot” by family and friends.
See, eventually, M. Senechal, The Grammar of Ornament (working title), in preparation.
See, for example, C. P. Snow, “Hardy”, Variety of Men; Béla Bollobás’s biographical essay in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; and Part Four of Robert Kanigel’s biography of Ramanujan, The Man Who Knew Infinity. (Bollobas is writing a full-length biography.)
Re Cartwright, see note 1; re Taussky, see note 24.
See note 6.
Dora Russell, The Tamarisk Tree, G. Putnam and Sons, New York, 1975.
M. C. Bradbrook, ‘That Infidel Place’, a Short History of Girton College, 1869- 1969, revised edition, Girton College, 1984.
Cambridge Colleges are headed by a Master or Mistress, Oxford’s by a Warden or Principal. Katharine Jex-Blake was Mistress of Girton College from 1916 to 1922. When a frightened student apologized for sitting in her chair, Jex-Blake retorted, “all the chairs are my chairs.” (This anecdote is told in http://www.girton.cam.ac.uk staff/scholarshipsarts.html.)
Bertrand Russell to Ottoline Morrell, June 8, 1916. N. Griffiin, ed., The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: the public years, 1914-1970, London, Routledge, 2001.
See G. H. Hardy, Bertrand Russell & Trinity, Arno Press, NY, 1977 (a reprint of a limited edition printed by Cambridge University Press in 1942).
Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: the spirit of solitude (1872–1921), New York, The Free Press, 1996.
The other students were Jean Nicod and Victor Lenzen.
Hardy, a good friend of Russell’s, was also interested in his work: see I. Grattan-Guin- ness, “The Interest of G. H. Hardy, F.R.S., in the philosophy and history of mathematics,” Notes. Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 5 (3) 411–424, 2001.
Dorothy Wrinch to K. Jex-Blake, undated. Quoted with permission of The Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge.
G. H. Hardy to K. Jex-Blake, undated. Quoted with permission of The Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge.
Bertrand Russell, March 17, 1918. Quoted with permission of The Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge.
The following excerpts are quoted from letters from Wrinch to Russell, Bertrand Russell Archives, McMaster University.
Watson had left UCL for Birmingham; the male mathematicians being occupied with the war in one way or another, he recommended that Wrinch succeed him.
Obituary, Nature, vol. 260, April 8, 1976, p. 211.
Lynda Grier, November 17, 1930, The Wrinch Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
J. A. Todd, “Hardy as Editor, ” The Mathematical Intelligencer, vol. 16, No. 2 (1994), 32–27.
Lady Bertha (Swirles) Jeffreys, unpublished memoir, cited with permission of The Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge.
As a student, Hardy wrote in his Apology, he considered mathematics a competitive sport; he credits Love, one of his teachers, with showing him its true nature.
D. M. Wrinch, “On the asymptotic evaluation of functions defined by contour integrals,” Amer. Jour, of Math., 50 (1928), 269–302.
D. M. Wrinch, “Some boundary problems of mathematical physics,” Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. 24 (1924), 204–224.
Jean Ayling, The Retreat From Parenthood, London, Kegan Paul, 1930, 293 pp.
John Jones, Dictionary of National Biography. “On 12 October 1930 John Nicholson was removed from Balliol to the Warneford Hospital in Oxford, where he was confined as a certified lunatic.” He died there, all but forgotten, a quarter century later.
Hardy to Wrinch, December 1929. The Wrinch Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
Hardy to Wrinch, undated. The Wrinch Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
See Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze, Rockefeller and the Internationalization of Mathematics Between the Two World Wars, Science Networks, vol. 25, Basel, Birkhäuser, 2001.
Wrinch to Hardy, March 24, 1930. The Wrinch Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College. An American, Miss Y—not her real name—spent a post-doctoral year (1925-26) studying with Hardy at Oxford on a prestigious National Research Council Fellowship. In witholding her name, I follow Todd (note 24).
Hardy to Wrinch, undated. The Wrinch Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College. This excerpt continues the letter cited in note 32.
Hardy to Wrinch, undated. The Wrinch Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
Hardy to Wrinch, undated. The Wrinch Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
Hardy to Wrinch, undated. The Wrinch Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
Wrinch to Love, May 26,1930. The Wrinch Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
Hardy to Wrinch, July 24, 1930. The Wrinch Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
See note 24.
E. F. Keller, Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines,Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2002.
Bollobás; see note 6.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Senechal, M. Hardy as mentor. The Mathematical Intelligencer 29, 16–23 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02984754
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02984754