Subject: Re: [HM] Hardy
From: Don Cook (tdctdc@surfsouth.com)
Date: Thu Feb 24 2000 - 20:27:06 EST
Dear List,
Nim asked:
Did Hardy suffer from depression at the later stage in his
life - "A Mathematician's Apology" seemed to suggest it,
but never mentioned it?
Dear Nim,
From The MacTutor History of Math Archives
http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Hardy.html
"By the time the war ended in 1945 Hardy health was failing fast. He longed
to be creative again, for that was all that really mattered to him in life,
but he knew that his creativity was gone and that he became very depressed.
By 1946 he could only get around by taking taxi rides, a few steps would
make him short of breath. In early summer of 1947 he tried to take his own
life by taking a large dose of barbiturates. He took so many, however, that
he was sick and survived. Snow writes [4]:-
In the Evelyn nursing home, Hardy was lying in bed. As a touch of farce, he
had a black eye. Vomiting from the drugs, he had hit his head on the
lavatory basin. He was self-mocking. He had made a mess of it. ...
He talked a little, nearly every time I saw him, about death. He wanted it.
He did not fear it: what was there to fear in nothingness? His hard
intellectual stoicism had come back. He would not try to kill himself again.
He wasn't good at it. He was prepared to wait. With an inconsistency which
might have pained him - for he ... believed in the rational to an extent
that I thought irrational - he showed an intense hypochondriac curiosity
about his own symptoms."
[4] C P Snow, Foreword, in G H Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology (Cambridge,
1967).
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Thu Feb 24 2000 - 17:37:18 EST