John Edensor Littlewood was an English mathematician. He worked on topics relating to analysis, number theory, and differential equations, and had a lengthy collaboration with G. H. Hardy. Wikipedia
“The surprising thing about this paper is that a man who could write it--would.”
Note quotation marks: Littlewood is repeating a joke without attribution. "Cross-purposes, Unconscious Assumptions, Howlers, Misprints, etc.", p. 59.
Littlewood's Miscellany (1986)
(about Ramanujan) p. lvii of [Hardy, G. H., G. H. Hardy, Obituary Notices: Srinivasa Ramanujan, Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, 19, xl-lviii, 1921, http://www.numbertheory.org/obituaries/LMS/ramanujan/index.html, 2008-05-26]
"Cross-purposes, Unconscious Assumptions, Howlers, Misprints, etc.", p. 61.
Littlewood's Miscellany (1986)
Harald Bohr, [Harald Bohr, Collected Mathematical Works, 1, 1952, Dansk Matematisk Forening, Copenhagen, 3172542, xiii-xxxiv, Looking Backward], p. xxvii
About
“A good mathematical joke is better, and better mathematics, than a dozen mediocre papers.”
"Introduction to A Mathematician's Miscellany", p. 24.
Littlewood's Miscellany (1986)
"Academic Life", p. 135.
Littlewood's Miscellany (1986)
