Louis Joel Mordell's time in London

Abstract

The celebrated number theorist Louis Joel Mordell spent around two and a half decades working in Manchester and for most of the rest of his career he was based in St John's College, Cambridge. There was, however, a brief period when he was based in London. The standard biographies of Mordell's life by and largely tend to overlook this period almost to the point of being deceptive about it. In this paper we will address this imbalance by discussing this chapter in Mordell's life in more detail.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to express his deepest gratitude to Professor Sarah Hart for organizing the one-day meeting of the BSHM ‘The History of Number Theory’ held in Birkbeck, University of London on 21 May 2016 that stimulated this research in the first place; Professor June Barrow-Green for helpful correspondence regarding mathematicians’ work during the First World War and to the staff of St John's College, Cambridge, for their helpful assistance in accessing Mordell's personal correspondence.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.