Louis J. Mordell was born on January 28, 1888 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Cambridge University receiving the highly prestigious designation as third wrangler (third out of the first class honours students in the gruelling tripos examinations) in 1909. In 1922, he conjectured that a curve of genus greater than 1 (that is, an equation that generates a surface with more than one hole) over the field Q of rational numbers has only finitely many rational points. This conjecture was proved in 1983 by Gerd Faltings and is now known as Faltings Theorem. While this theorem and its consequences have little meaning for those outside the realm of pure mathematics, there is an anecdote about Mordell that is understandable to everyone. In his later years,
Mordell was known to fall asleep during seminars where mathematicians shared ideas. On one occasion, Mordell was in a deep sleep when someone in the audience asked “Isn’t that Stickelberger’s theorem?” The speaker said “No it isn’t.” A few minutes later the person interrupted again and said “I’m positive that’s Stickelberger’s theorem!” The speaker again declared that it wasn’t. At the end of the lecture, the loud applause wakened Mordell, who looked up and pointing at the board, said “There’s old Stickelberger’s result!”
