Paul Erdos (1913 – 1996)
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.
The SF created us to enjoy our suffering. ... The sooner we die, the sooner we defy His plans.
I'm not competent to judge. But no doubt he was a great man.
It is not enough to be in the right place at the right time. You should also have an open mind at the right time.
Erdős knows about more problems than anybody else, and he not only knows about various problems and conjectures, but he also knows the tastes of various mathematicians. So if I get a letter from him giving me three of his conjectures and two of his problems, then it's sure that these are exactly the kind of conjectures and problems I'm interested in, and these are exactly the kind of questions I may be able to answer.
Of course, this applies not only to me, but to everybody else. So Erdős has an amazing ability to match problems with people. Which is why so many mathematicians benefit from his presence. Every letter is likely to inspire you to do some work, or every phone call will give you some problems you are interested in.
Hunagarian mathematician Paul Erdős, although an atheist, spoke of an imaginary book, in which God has written down all the most beautiful mathematical proofs. When Erdős wanted to express particular appreciation of a proof, he would exclaim "This one's from the Book!". This viewpoint expresses the idea that mathematics, as the intrinsically true foundation on which the laws of our universe are built, is a natural candidate for what has been personified as God by different religious mystics.
Paul Erdős is the consummate problem solver: his hallmark is the succinct and clever argument, often leading to a solution from "the book". He loves areas of mathematics which do not require an excessive amount of technical knowledge but give scope for ingenuity and surprise. The mathematics of Paul Erdős is the mathematics of beauty and insight.
Suppose aliens invade the earth and threaten to obliterate it in a year's time unless human beings can find the Ramsey number for red five and blue five. We could marshal the world's best minds and fastest computers, and within a year we could probably calculate the value. If the aliens demanded the Ramsey number for red six and blue six, however, we would have no choice but to launch a preemptive attack.
If numbers aren't beautiful, I don't know what is.
Probably the greatest mathematician of the twentieth century, Paul Erdős ... was so eccentric that he made Einstein look normal. He was 11 before he ever tied his shoes, 21 before he ever buttered toast, and died without ever boiling an egg.
Erdős lived on the road, traveling from conference to conference, owning nothing but math notebooks and a suitcase or two. His life consisted of math, nothing else.
"Want to meet Erdos?" mathematicians would ask. "Just stay here and wait. He'll show up."
Television is something the Russians invented to destroy American education.
We'll continue tomorrow — if I live.
This one's from the Book!