L. J. Mordell
| Louis Mordell | |
|---|---|
Louis Mordell in Nizza, 1970.
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| Born |
Louis Joel Mordell 28 January 1888 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Died | 12 March 1972 (aged 84) |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | St John's College, Cambridge |
| Known for |
Chowla–Mordell theorem Mordell–Weil theorem Erdős–Mordell inequality |
| Spouse(s) | Mabel Elizabeth Cambridge |
| Children | Kathleen, Donald |
| Awards |
Smith's Prize (1912) De Morgan Medal (1941) Senior Berwick Prize (1946) Sylvester Medal (1949) Fellow of the Royal Society |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions |
Birkbeck College University of Manchester University of Cambridge |
| Doctoral advisor | Henry Frederick Baker |
| Doctoral students |
Ram Prakash Bambah Eric Barnes J. W. S. Cassels John Chalk Clive Davis |
Louis Joel Mordell (28 January 1888 – 12 March 1972) was an American-born British mathematician, known for pioneering research in number theory. He was born in Philadelphia, United States, in a Jewish family of Lithuanian extraction.
Mordell was educated at the University of Cambridge where he completed the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos as a student of St John's College, Cambridge starting in 1906 after successfully passing the scholarship examination.
After graduating Mordell began independent research into particular diophantine equations: the question of integer points on the cubic curve, and special case of what is now called a Thue equation, the Mordell equation
He took an appointment at Birkbeck College, London in 1913. During World War I he was involved in war work, but also produced one of his major results, proving in 1917 the multiplicative property of Ramanujan's tau-function. The proof was by means, in effect, of the Hecke operators, which had not yet been named after Erich Hecke; it was, in retrospect, one of the major advances in modular form theory, beyond its status as an odd corner of the theory of special functions.
In 1920, he took a teaching position in UMIST, becoming the Fielden Chair of Pure Mathematics at the University of Manchester in 1922 and Professor in 1923. There he developed a third area of interest within number theory, geometry of numbers. His basic work on Mordell's theorem is from 1921 to 1922, as is the formulation of the Mordell conjecture.
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