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After his schooling at Winchester, Hardy entered Cambridge after standing fourth in the Tripos examination. Years later, Hardy sought to abolish the Tripos system as he felt that it was becoming more an end in itself than being a means to an end. While at university, Hardy joined the Cambridge Apostles, an elite, intellectual secret society.
Hardy is credited with reforming British mathematics by bringing rigor into it, which was previously a characteristic of French, Swiss and German mathematics. British mathematicians remained largely in the tradition of applied mathematicsApplied mathematics is a branch of mathematics that concerns itself with the application of mathematical knowledge to other domains. Such applications include numerical analysis, mathematics of engineering, linear programming, optimization and operations, in thrall to the reputation of Isaac NewtonKneller's portrait of 1689. Sir Isaac Newton ( December 25, 1642 March 20, 1727 by the Julian calendar then in use; or January 4, 1643 March 31, 1727 by the Gregorian calendar) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and alchemis; Hardy was in tune with the cours d'analyse methods dominant in France, and aggressively promoted his conception of pure mathematicsBroadly speaking, pure mathematics is mathematics motivated entirely for reasons other than application. From the eighteenth century onwards, this was a recognised category of mathematical activity, sometimes characterised as speculative mathematics and a, in particular against the hydrodynamicsFluid dynamics Hydrodynamics is fluid dynamics applied to liquids, such as water, alcohol, oil, and blood. Blaise Pascal in the 1600s contributed some of the initial theory to this field. The term originates from the work of Daniel Bernoulli, based on the which was an important part of Cambridge mathematics.
Hardy was Sadleirian Professor at CambridgeThis article is about Cambridge, England; see also other places called Cambridge. The city of Cambridge is an old English University town and the regional centre of the county of Cambridgeshire. It lies approximately 50 miles (80 km) north of London and i from 19311931 is the common year starting on Thursday. see link for calendar) Events January January 4 Female aviator Elly Beinhorn begins her flight to Africa January 6 Thomas Edison submits his last patent application. January 22 Sir Isaac Isaacs sworn in as the to 1942; he had left Cambridge to take the Savilian Chair of Geometry at Oxford in the aftermath of the Bertrand Russell affair during World War I. From 1911 he collaborated with J.E. Littlewood, in extensive work in mathematical analysis and analytic number theory. This led (along with much else) to quantitative progress on the Waring problem, as part of the Hardy-Littlewood circle method , as it became known. In prime number theory they proved results and some notable conditional results also. This was a major factor in the development of number theory as a system of conjectures; examples are the first and second Hardy-Littlewood conjectures. He is also known for formulating the Hardy-Weinberg principle, a basic principle of population genetics, independently from Wilhelm Weinberg in 1908.
Socially he was associated with the Bloomsbury group and the Cambridge Apostles and was an avid cricket fan. According to the testimony of those who knew him best (his long-time collaborator J. E. Littlewood, his student Alan Turing, and his friend C. P. Snow) Hardy was homosexual in orientation. Hardy never married, and in his final years he was cared for by his sister.