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Paul Erdos ( March 26, 1913 – September 20, 1996) was an immensely prolific and famously eccentric mathematician who, with hundreds of collaborators, worked on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory and probability theory.1 Biography
He was born in Budapest, Hungary as Erdos Pál. (Erdos is pronounced as SAMPA /errd9:S/, similar to "Air-dersh" if you say the second syllable non- rhotically like a Londoner.) His parents were non-practicing JewThe word Jew is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to either a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or a member of the Jewish culture or ethnicity. This article discusses the term as describing an ethnic group; for as. The Budapest Jewish community of that day produced at least five remarkable thinkers besides Erdos: Eugene WignerEugene Paul Wigner ( Hungarian Wigner Pal Jeno) ( November 17, 1902 January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian- American physicist and mathematician. He was one of a generation of physicists of the 1920s who remade the world of physics. It was a collection of peopl, the physicist and engineer; Edward TellerLawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Edward Teller (original Hungarian name Teller Ede ( January 15, 1908 September 9 2003) was an Hungarian-born American nuclear physicist of Jewish descent. He was known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bom, the physicist and politician; Leó SzilárdAlbert Einstein. Leo Szilard ( February 11, 1898 May 30, 1964) was a Jewish Hungarian- American physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project. He was born in Budapest and died in La Jolla, California. He was probably the first scientist to think seriously, the chemist, physicist and politician; John von NeumannA separate article covers Saint John Neumann, the American priest. John von Neumann (Neumann Janos) ( December 28, 1903 February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian- American mathematician who made important contributions in quantum physics, set theory, computer sci, the mathematician and polymath; and Georg LukácsGeorg Lukacs ( April 13, 1885 June 4, 1971) was a Hegelian and Marxist philosopher and literary critic. Life and politics Lukacs's full name, in German, was Georg Bernhard von Lukacs von Szegedin and in Hungarian was szegedi Lukacs Gyorgy Bernat he publis, the philosopher. Erdos showed early promise as a child prodigyProdigies are masters of a specific skill or art, a talent which manifests itself at an early age. One generally accepted definition of a prodigy is a person who, by the age of 10, displays expert proficiency in a field usually only undertaken by adults., and soon became regarded as a mathematical geniusThis article is about people with exceptional mental abilities. For the cartoon, see Genius (cartoon). The term genius is originally a Latin term from Roman culture meaning the guiding or "tutelary" spirit of a person or indeed of an entire gens, or the g by his peers.
Although he was famous and the recipient of many awards, he spent most of his life as a " vagabond", travelling between scientific conferences and the homes of colleagues all over the world. He would typically show up at a colleague's doorstep and announce "my brain is open", staying long enough to collaborate on a few papers before moving on a few days later. Worldly goods meant little to him, and he gave away most of the money he got from awards or other sources to people in need and various worthy causes.
He once famously said "A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems", and he drank plenty of it. After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, who bet him $500 that he could not stop taking amphetamines for a month. He won the bet, but complained that mathematics had been set back for a month. He complained, "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." The bet won, he promptly resumed his habit.
He had his own idiosyncratic vocabulary: he spoke of "the Book", an imaginary book in which God had written down the best and most elegant proofs for mathematical theorems (although he was an atheist and playfully referred to God as the "Supreme Fascist"). When he saw a particularly beautiful mathematical proof he would exclaim, "This one's from the Book!". Other idiosyncratic elements of Erdos' vocabulary include: children were referred to as " epsilons"; women were "bosses"; and men were "slaves"; people who stopped doing math had "died"; people who died had "left"; and, to give a mathematical lecture was "to preach". He suggested that his epitaph should be "Finally I am becoming stupider no more".
He died of a heart attack on September 20, 1996 while attending a conference in Warsaw, Poland.
