G H Hardy's father, Isaac Hardy, was bursar and an art master at Cranleigh school.

His mother
Sophia had been a teacher at Lincoln Teacher's Training School. Both parents were highly
intelligent with some mathematical skills but, coming from poor families, had not been able to
have a university education. Hardy (he was always known as Hardy except to one or two close
friends who called him Harold) attended Cranleigh school up to the age of twelve with great
success [5]:-

His parents knew he was prodigiously clever, and so did he. He came top of his class in all
subjects. But, as a result of coming top of his class, he had to go in front of the school to receive
prizes: and that he could not bear.

Hardy did not appear to have the passion for mathematics that many mathematicians experience
when young. Hardy himself writes in [4]:-

I do not remember having felt, as a boy, any passion for mathematics, and such notions as I may
have had of the career of a mathematician were far from noble. I thought of mathematics in
terms of examinations and scholarships: I wanted to beat other boys, and this seemed to be the
way in which I could do so most decisively.

Indeed he did win a scholarship to Winchester College in 1889, entering the College the
following year. Winchester was the best school in England for mathematical training yet, despite
admitting later in life that he had been well-educated there, Hardy disliked everything about the
school other than the academic training he received. Like all public schools it was a rough place
for a frail, shy boy like Hardy. It is significant that although he did have a passion for ball games
in general and cricket in particular, he was never coached in sport at Winchester. Somehow he
failed to take part fully in the non-academic activities.

While at Winchester Hardy won an open scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, which he
entered in 1896. At Cambridge Hardy was assigned to the most famous coach R R Webb. He
quickly realised that the point of the training was simply to achieve the best possible marks in the
examinations by learning all the tricks of the trade. He was shocked to discover that Webb was
not interested in the subject of mathematics, only in the tricks of examinations

Briefly Hardy thought he might change topics and study history instead. However, he managed
to change his coach to A E H Love. Hardy expresses his gratitude to Love in [4]:-

My eyes were first opened by Professor Love, who first taught me a few terms and gave me my
first serious conception of analysis. But the great debt which I owe to him was his advice to read
Jordan's "Cours d'analyse"; and I shall never forget the astonishment with which I read that
remarkable work, the first inspiration for so many mathematicians of my generation, and learnt
for the first time as I read it what mathematics really meant.

Hardy was placed as fourth wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos of 1898, a result which
continued to annoy him for, despite feeling that the system was very silly, he still felt that he
should have come out on top. Hardy was elected a fellow of Trinity in 1900 then, in 1901, he
was awarded a Smith's prize jointly with J H Jeans 'with unspecified relative merit'.
The next period of Hardy's career was up to 1911 when, as Burkill writes in [1], he:-

... wrote many papers on the convergence of series and integrals and allied topics. Although this
work established his reputation as an analyst, his greatest service to mathematics in this early
period was A course of pure mathematics (1908). This work was the first rigorous English
exposition of number, function, limit, and so on, adapted to the undergraduate, and thus it
transformed university teaching.

This was a period of which Hardy wrote himself [4]:-

I wrote a great deal... but very little of any importance; there are not more than four of five
papers which I can still remember with some satisfaction.

He is described in [3] as follows:-

He personified the popular idea of the absent-minded professor. But those who formed the idea
that he was merely an absent-minded professor would receive a shock in conversation, where he
displayed amazing vitality on every subject under the sun. ... He was interested in the game of
chess, but was frankly puzzled by something in its nature which seemed to come into conflict
with his mathematical principles.

He was president of the London Mathematical Society from 1926 to 1928 and again from 1939
to 1941. He received the De Morgan Medal of the Society in 1929.