Louis Mordell's father was Phineas Mordell, a Hebrew scholar,
and his mother was Annie Feller. Both Phineas and Annie were
Jewish and had been born in Lithuania. Phineas had emigrated to
Philadelphia in the United States in 1881 and there he had
worked very hard, having jobs such as a nightwatchman during the
night and as a teacher during the day, while he earned the
necessary money to bring his sisters and Annie, his wife to be,
to the United States. Phineas and Annie had four sons and four
daughters; their son Louis being their third child. Louis became
fascinated by mathematics while at grammar school. However he
was essentially self-taught in the subject, buying second-hand
mathematics books from a bookstore in Philadelphia for five or
ten cents when he was about 13 years old. These books presented
many examples taken from the Cambridge Tripos examinations and
Louis soon came to look on Cambridge University in England as
the place of highest mathematical learning. It became his
ambition to study mathemati