Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell (born 7 February 1883 in Peterhead, Aberdeen, † December 21, 1960 in Watsonville, California ) was a Scottish- American mathematician who published books on the history of mathematics and numerous papers on number theory, combinatorics and calculus.

Bell lived since 1903 in the USA. He attended Stanford University and Columbia University. Since 1912, he taught mathematics at the University of Washington and later at the California Institute of Technology. In 1924 he was awarded the Bôcher Memorial Prize for his memoir Arithmetical para phrases.

Bell has become known to a wider audience with his books, especially his classic collection of Mathematicians biographies Men of Mathematics (1937 ), which is still reprinted. Further publications are Algebraic Arithmetic (1927 ), The Development of Mathematics ( 1940) and Mathematics, Queen and Servant of Science ( 1951).

According to him, the Bell's number was called, which describes the number of partitions of an n- element set.

Under the pseudonym John Taine Bell also wrote science fiction novels.

Writings

• Arithmetical para phrases, Transactions of the AMS 22, 1921, pp. 1-30 and 198-219
• Arithmetical equivalents for a remarkable identity in between theta functions, Mathematische Zeitschrift 13, 1922, pp. 146-152
• Existence theorems on the numbers of representations of odd integers as sums of squares 4 t 2, Crelle Journal 163, 1930, pp. 65-70
• Exponential Numbers, The American Mathematical Monthly 41, 1934, pp. 411-419