Talk:G. H. Hardy

message: The assertion about Hardy's sexuality is presumably based on CP Snow. It hardly deserves so central a place here.
Charles Matthews 19:29, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: (A comment nine months later) ... And it doesn't deserve a category listing. There appears to be a minor edit war over this at the moment, which I guess I'm about to enter. But putting every single person in wikipedia who was allegedly or admittedly gay into a sexuality-related category is idiotic - particularly when you're dealig with a person like Hardy whose sexuality was not publicly determined. (Wikpiedia isn't a postumous outing organization.) Hardy's sexuality is irrelevant to his public persona, his reason for being in wikipedia. He was also a smoker; shoould we create a "Category: Smokers" and include everybody in wikipedia who puffed on a cigarette or pipe? - DavidWBrooks 01:36, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: comments

message: There really needs to an addition to this article about the discovery of Ramanujan, which I feel was a very important part of Hardy's life.
: Er, did you read the article? It's in there, quite a lot. - DavidWBrooks 11:24, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What's wrong with "mentor"? It seems to describe very accurately their relationship. "Postal partner" makes little obvious sense. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 00:48, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Then replace it with collaboration. He wasn't tutor of Ramanujan. Ramanujan is way smarter than him Uddhav9 (talk) 09:12, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: "Mentor" doesn't mean "tutor." Ramanujan was in a mathematics class by himself, everybody knows that, but he needed somebody to bring him into the world's math network - that's what this concerns.   - DavidWBrooks (talk) 10:59, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

text:  Don't make forum comments such as "x is way smarter than y". Hrodvarsson (talk) 14:30, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Mentor is fine with me. Xxanthippe (talk) 11:51, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Ramanujan

message: Just out of interest, Hardy's was interested in baseball (during his time in the United States) as well as cricket. (He is said to have proposed some rule changes to the game too - inevitably rejected by the baseball authorities.)
As for cricket, he said:
: "Cricket is the only game in which one plays against eleven opponents - and the ten members of one's own team."
I can think of several first-class cricketers who seem to work on this principle.
Hair Commodore 12:42, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hardy and the game of cricket, etc. 

message: The following text was added by 198.166.26.141
:He was a very depressed man, and even attempted suicide several times. To divert him from such an undertaking, one of his good friends suggested he write a book, and so he wrote A Mathematician's Apology. After completing and publishing the work, he again attempted suicide - and was successful.
Now, as far as I can remember (from C. P. Snow's foreword) this is not true. He attempted suicide once, in the summer of 1947 (several years after the Apology was written) when his health was failing, and made such a mess of it that he didn't try again. It wasn't long after that he died but it was from natural causes I think. --Spondoolicks 10:05, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suicide? 

message: This story is not helpful as stated, since (1) there is no source (2) we don't know whose opinion it is. If anyone has more information please provide it, both in this article and in John Edensor Littlewood where the same story is told. Robert Kanigel in The Man Who Knew Infinity quotes the story on p. 165 and in the footnotes says "This has become a commonplace in mathematical circles", which means it may be unverifiable. Thanks. --Uncia (talk) 13:14, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Kanigel is an acceptable secondary source. Wiki editors are not expected to do original research. Xxanthippe (talk) 07:40, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that Kanigel is an acceptable secondary source, but we still need to know who made the statement originally, otherwise it is "some people say that ...", i.e., WP:WEASEL. The article says that Bohr attributed it to "a colleague". Kanigel has a less detailed story, saying only "somebody said" without mentioning Bohr. As a statement about Hardy's work it seems not to be encyclopedic. Maybe we should take out Bohr, give Kanigel as a source and mark "somebody said" with Template:Who? Or should we just delete the story? --Uncia (talk) 12:35, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Try "Kanigel reports a joke that circulated at the time that ............." Xxanthippe (talk) 23:20, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

text: I dug up the source for the Bohr story, and gave an extended quote which shows that Bohr shares the high regard this story illustrates. Unfortunately Bohr did not name the original source, giving it only as "an excellent colleague". --Uncia (talk) 00:23, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Three great English mathematicians: Hardy, Littlewood, Hardy-Littlewood 

message: Personally, I believe we could live very well without categorising people by their sexuality (or race, or "ethnicity", or religion) in Wikipedia - especially when it comes to using labels, which tend to be binary. At the same time, this does not mean we should not *describe* a significant aspect of a deceased person's private life, or of his sentiments or attitudes, as long as this is not an attempt to claim somebody for a particular group.
"Gay" may be an anachronism. We also do not know whether Hardy had male lovers in the physical sense of the word, or even what his physical, as opposed to emotional, proclivities were. At the same time, he was unusually straightforward for the time - at least within a circle of friends - about not being a heterosexual in the sense that most men happen to be. Contemporary sources addressed this shortly after his death: Littlewood, one of his best friends, calls him (somewhat facetiously) a "non-practising homosexual"; C. P. Snow goes into much greater detail (viz., Hardy stated that marriage was an impossibility for him, he was given to strong emotional (but, according to Snow, non-physical) relations with young men, a (male) lost love of his youth had left him changed - this last detail has been fleshed out since; the young man (whose identity is now known) committed suicide).
The current text is fine; at the same time, if we delve more deeply into Hardy's life and psychological makeup later, there is no reason why we should not go over this (more briefly than I have just done, and with citations). Feketekave (talk) 21:44, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: What is the primary source that indicates that Littlewood ever called Hardy a "non-practising homosexual"? Xxanthippe (talk) 01:45, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

text: A primary source is needed before claims of this sort make it into article space. Otherwise Wikipedia descends into celebrity gossip. Xxanthippe (talk) 08:24, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, a reminder that words can be said without consideration for their literal meaning :D "I like that person" does not necessarily mean that you "like" in any particular sense, just that you approve of (or even just not hold in contempt) the said person. 118.90.44.104 (talk) 10:25, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  More on sexuality 

message: "In 1903 he earned his M.A., which was the highest academic degree at English universities at that time."
I am not sure that "earned" is quite right here. A Cambridge M.A. can be obtained after three years by anybody holding a B.A. All that is required is to pay a small sum and attend the relevant graduation ceremony. The sentence gives the impression that Hardy did something noteworthy to obtain the M.A., which is not correct.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.138.163.90 (talk) 17:16, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: One does not have to actually attend a ceremony, but that is beside the point. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:06, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Life 

message: Was he a Communist? I believe I read somewhere that he had a picture of Lenin on his desk, and thought the UK should enter into a political union with the Soviet Union.
To be fair, even in the latter part of his life he lived in a time when it was less unusual for an intellectual, such as he was, to be pro-Soviet than it is now.
Meltingpot (talk) 20:25, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Politics

message: Substituted at 15:44, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: There is no news till now about the death of Hardy and the place where he is resting or cremated... Gamaliel Hardy (talk) 18:10, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Death of GH Hardy 

message: I cleaned up the bibliography, put everything into a uniform format using citation templates, and it has been reverted without comment by User:Xxanthippe. What error did I make with my edits? MathsHistorian (talk) 23:46, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Changes by 4 edit spa made no improvement and removed information. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:28, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: The only substantial thing I meant to remove was the remark about du Sautoy's recommendation, which is surely irrelevant in a bibliography (although perhaps it belongs in the article on A Mathematician's Apology). Everything else was cleanup or removing redundancies. But OK, I accept your point and I will proceed more carefully. MathsHistorian (talk) 06:38, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bibliography 

message: The aphorism section was recently deleted with reasonable justification from the guidelines, but I think we lose a good sense of the gentleman.  I'd be inclined to ignore the rules here.  Any thoughts?  ? --John (User:Jwy/talk) 19:41, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that it should go back despite pedantic Wikilawyering: WP:IAR. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:36, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aphorisms Section