Eric Temple Bell (February 7, 1883, Peterhead, Scotland - December 21, 1960, Watsonville, California) was a mathematician and science fiction author born in Scotland who lived in the USA from 1903 until his death. He published his non-fiction as Bell and his fiction as John Taine. February 7 is the 38th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1883 (MDCCCLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Peterhead is a town in Scotland with a population of approximately 18,000. ... Motto: , traditionally rendered in Scots as Wha daur meddle wi me?[1] and in English as No one provokes me with impunity. ... December 21 is the 355th day of the year (356th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1960 calendar). ... Watsonville is a city located in Santa Cruz County, California. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Note that this partial list contains some authors whose works of fantastic fiction would today be called science fiction, even if they predate, or did not work in that genre. ... Motto: , traditionally rendered in Scots as Wha daur meddle wi me?[1] and in English as No one provokes me with impunity. ...

Biography

He attended Stanford University and Columbia University (where he was a student of Cassius Jackson Keyser) and was on the faculty first at the University of Washington and later at the California Institute of Technology. He did research in number theory; see in particular Bell series. He attempted — not altogether successfully — to make the traditional umbral calculus (understood at that time to be the same thing as the "symbolic method" of Blissard) logically rigorous. He is the eponym of the Bell polynomials and the Bell numbers of combinatorics. (He is not the eponym of the "bell curve", which is so called because of its apparent similarity in shape to the cross-section of a bell.) In 1924 he was awarded the Bôcher Memorial Prize for his work in mathematical analysis. Stanford redirects here. ... Columbia University is a private university whose main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of the Borough of Manhattan in New York City. ... This article needs to be wikified. ... The University of Washington, founded in 1861, is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. ... The California Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Caltech)[1] is a private, coeducational university located in Pasadena, California, in the United States. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... In mathematics, the Bell series is a formal power series used to study properties of multiplicative arithmetical functions. ... In mathematics, before the 1970s, the term umbral calculus was understood to mean the surprising similarities between otherwise unrelated polynomial equations, and certain shadowy techniques that can be used to prove them. ... In combinatorial mathematics, the Bell polynomials, named in honor of Eric Temple Bell, are given by the sum extending over all sequences j1, j2, j3, ..., jn−k+1 of positive integers such that Combinatorial meaning If the integer n is partitioned into a sum in which 1 appears j1... The Bell numbers, named in honor of Eric Temple Bell, are a sequence of integers arising in combinatorics that begins thus (sequence A000110 in OEIS): In general, Bn is the number of partitions of a set of size n. ... Combinatorics is a branch of mathematics that studies collections (usually finite) of objects that satisfy specified criteria. ... The normal distribution, also called Gaussian distribution (although Gauss was not the first to work with it), is an extremely important probability distribution in many fields. ... The Bôcher Memorial Prize was founded by the American Mathematical Society in 1923 in memory of Maxime Bôcher with an initial endowment of $1,450 (contributed by members of that society). ... Analysis is the generic name given to any branch of mathematics that depends upon the concepts of limits and convergence. ...

Writing career

Men of Mathematics by E.T. Bell

Bell wrote a book of biographical sketches titled Men of Mathematics, which is still in print. It inspired many people to take up mathematics, though historians of mathematics do not regard it as particularly accurate. He wrote numerous science fiction novels under the pseudonym John Taine, which were well received at the time of their publication, but have been largely forgotten now. In 1993 Constance Reid wrote a biography, The Search for E.T. Bell, which portrayed its subject as secretive, eccentric and somewhat mysterious. Image File history File links Men_of_Mathematics. ... Image File history File links Men_of_Mathematics. ... Men of Mathematics by E.T. Bell Men of Mathematics is a well-known book on the history of mathematics written by the mathematician E.T. Bell. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... A pseudonym (Greek: false name) is a fictitious name used by an individual as an alternative to his or her legal name. ...

Works

Non-fiction books

• An Arithmetical Theory of Certain Numerical Functions, Seattle Washington, The University, 1915, 50p.
• The Cyclotomic Quinary Quintic, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, The New Era Printing Company, 1912, 97p.
• Algebraic Arithmetic, New York, American Mathematical Society, 1927, 180p.
• Debunking Science, Seattle, University of Washington book store, 1930, 40p.
• The Search for Truth, Baltimore, Reynal and Hitchcock, 1934, 279p.
  • Reprint: Williams and Wilkins Co, 1935
• Man and His Lifebelts, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1938, 340p.
  • Reprint: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1935, 2nd printing 1946
  • Reprint: Kessinger Publishing, 2005
• Men of Mathematics, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1937, 592p.
• The Development of Mathematics, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1945, 637p.
  • Reprint: New York, McGraw-Hill, 1945
  • Reprint: Dover Publications, 1992
• The Magic of Numbers, Whittlesey House, 1946, 418p.
  • Reprint: New York, Dover Publications, 1991, ISBN 0-486-26788-1, 418p.
  • Reprint: Sacred Science Institute, 2006
• Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (1951)
• The Last Problem, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1961, 308p.
  • Reprint: Mathematical Association of America, 1990, ISBN 0-88385-451-1, 326p.
• Numerology, Hyperion Press, 1979, ISBN 0-88355-774-6, 195p.

Dover Publications is a book publisher founded in 1941. ... Jean-François Millet Le Semeur (The Sower) Simon & Schuster logo, circa 1961. ... The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on undergraduate mathematics education. ...

Scholarly papers

• [This subsection needs attention.]

Novels

• The Purple Sapphire (1924)
• The Gold Tooth (1927)
• Quayle's Invention (1927)
• Green Fire (1928)
• The Greatest Adventure (1929)
• The Crystal Horde (1930)
• The Iron Star (1930)
• The Time Stream (1931)
• Seeds of Life (1931)
• Before the Dawn (1934)
• The Forbidden Garden (1947)
• The Crystal Horde (1952)
• G.O.G. 666 (1954)

References

• Constance Reid. The Search for E.T. Bell, Also Known as John Taine. Washington, DC, Mathematical Association of America, 1993, ISBN 0-88385-508-9, x, 372p.

External links

• O'Connor, John J., and Edmund F. Robertson. "Eric Temple Bell". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.
• Eric Temple Bell at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Eric Temple Bell at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database