The Search for E. T. Bell: Also Known as John TaineEric Temple Bell (1883-1960) was a distinguished mathematician and a best selling popularizer of mathematics. His Men of Mathematics, still in print after almost sixty years, inspired scores of young readers to become mathematicians. Under the name of John Taine, he also published science fiction novels (among them The Time Stream, Before the Dawn, and The Crystal Horde) that served to broaden the subject matter of that genre during its early years. In The Search for E. T. Bell, Constance Reid has given us a compelling account of this complicated, difficult man who never divulged to anyone, not even to his wife and son, the story of his early life and family background. Her book is thus more of a mystery than a traditional biography. It begins with the discovery of an unexpected inscription in an English churchyard and a series of cryptic notations in a boy's schoolbook. Then comes an inadvertent revelation, by Bell himself, in a respected mathematical journal. You will have to read the book to learn the rest. |
Contents
A Cat That Cant Be Caught | 3 |
An Unanticipated Question | 11 |
What Lyle Had Learned | 19 |
Who Was Mrs James Bell? | 27 |
They Say What They Say Let Them Say | 35 |
The Fishcurers of Peterhead | 43 |
From the Corner of Dark House Lane | 51 |
In Gold Coin of the United States | 59 |
A Lusty Old Subject | 139 |
The Poetry of Mathematics | 153 |
Metamorphosis | 165 |
Parallel Worlds | 177 |
All This | 217 |
Dr Bell and Mr Taine | 231 |
Queen of the Sciences | 245 |
Searching | 261 |
A California Valley | 67 |
A Maker of Mathematicians | 77 |
Going Their Separate Ways | 87 |
Return to Eden | 97 |
The Forces of Nature | 107 |
Fateful If Not Fated | 119 |
The Decisive Event | 129 |
Common terms and phrases
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