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| Nevile's Court, Trinity College, Cambridge |
On this day, September 6, in 1977, Cambridge mathematician J.
E. Littlewood passed away. He is perhaps best remembered for his 35-year
collaboration with G. H. Hardy, one of the most famous collaborations in all of mathematics.
They created four rules governing their work, one of which was that every paper would carry both names, credit always being shared equally—whether or not both had contributed.
Their influence on British mathematics was so great that, in
1947, Harald Bohr quoted a colleague as saying: “Nowadays there are only three
really great English mathematicians: Hardy, Littlewood, and Hardy–Littlewood.”
Though they lived only steps apart at Trinity College, they typically chose to collaborate by letter or through notes sent by messenger, rather than
in person. From the time of his arrival until his death 65 years later, Littlewood kept
the same rooms in Nevile’s quad—rooms overlooking the Wren Library on the
River Cam. Given the view, who can blame him?
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| Nevile's Court, Trinity College, Cambridge |
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| Staircase D, Nevile's Court, Trinity College, Cambridge |
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| Wren Library as seen from Nevile's Court, Trinity College, Cambridge |
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| Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge as seen from the River Cam |
If you’d like to explore more about Littlewood, Hardy, and their sometime collaborator—the brilliant and tragic Srinivasa Ramanujan—the 2015 film
The Man Who Knew Infinity offers a moving glimpse into that world.
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| Memorials in Trinity College, Cambridge, Chapel (Littlewood & Ramanujan) |
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| Memorials in Trinity College, Cambridge, Chapel (Hardy) |
