Feb
17th
Tue
17th
Polya recalled how Hardy ‘… valued clarity, yet what he valued most in mathematics was not clarity but power, surmounting great obstacles that others abandoned in despair.’ Polya also recalled how much Hardy loved jokes and told an anecdote which illustrated both aspects of Hardy’s character: In working with Hardy, I once had an idea of which he approved. But afterwards I did not work sufficiently hard to carry out that idea, and Hardy disapproved. He did not tell me so, of course, yetit came out when he visited a zoological garden in Sweden with Marcel Riesz. In a cage there was a bear. The cage had a gate, and on the gate there was a lock. The bear sniffed at the lock, hitit with his paw, then growled a little, turned around and walkedaway. ‘He is like Polya’, said Hardy. ‘He has excellent ideas, but does not carry them out.
