Paul Erdős was a Hungarian mathematician born on 26 March 1913 in Budapest, the only surviving child of Anna and Lajos Erdős, both Jewish high school mathematics teachers.
Paul Erdős was a Hungarian mathematician born on 26 March 1913 in Budapest, the only surviving child of Anna and Lajos Erdős, both Jewish high school mathematics teachers. ◦ He died on 20 September 1996 at a mathematics conference in Warsaw. ◦ By the age of five, given a person's age, he could calculate in his head how many seconds they had lived. ◦ He published around 1,500 mathematical papers during his lifetime and worked with more than 500 different collaborators. ◦ His biographer Paul Hoffman described him as "probably the most eccentric mathematician in the world". ◦ Erdős spent most of his adult life living out of a suitcase. ◦ He had no home, no wife, and no job. ◦ At age three he entertained his mother's friends by multiplying three-digit numbers in his head, and at four discovered negative numbers. ◦
He firmly believed mathematics to be a social activity. ◦ The collective goal, he said, was to reveal the pages in the SF's Book. ◦ Erdős believed God — whom he affectionately called the SF or Supreme Fascist — kept a transfinite book containing the shortest, most beautiful proof for every conceivable problem. ◦ Lecturing in 1985 he said, "You don't have to believe in God, but you should believe in The Book." ◦ He also said, "The SF created us to enjoy our suffering. The sooner we die, the sooner we defy His plans." ◦ His motto was "Another roof, another proof." ◦
Erdős lived a nomadic lifestyle with the sole purpose of writing mathematical papers with other mathematicians, and devoted his waking hours to mathematics even into his later years. ◦ During the 1940s he wandered from one American university to the next, spurning full-time job offers so he would have the freedom to work with anyone at any time on any problem of his choice. ◦ Erdős's modus operandi was to show up on the doorstep of a fellow mathematician, declare, "My brain is open," work with his host for a day or two until he was bored or his host was run down, and then move on to another home. ◦ During his visits he expected his hosts to lodge him, feed him, do his laundry, and arrange transport to his next destination. ◦ With amphetamines to keep him going, Erdős did mathematics with a missionary zeal, often 20 hours a day. ◦ He sustained his roughly 20-hour mathematical workdays with amphetamines and coffee. ◦ Throughout his career he offered cash payments for solutions to unresolved problems, ranging from $25 for problems just out of reach to $10,000 for problems both difficult and significant. ◦
Erdős believed God kept a transfinite book containing the shortest, most beautiful proof for every conceivable problem. ◦ He described the SF as keeping to Himself the elegant solutions to all sorts of intriguing mathematical problems. ◦ He viewed numbers as friends from a young age, recalling that he could depend on them to always be there and always behave in the same way. ◦
Erdős was known as one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. ◦ In his mathematical style, he was much more of a "problem solver" than a "theory developer"; Ernst Strauss called him "the absolute monarch of problem posers." ◦ His work leaned toward solving previously open problems rather than developing new areas, and his contributions to Ramsey theory and the probabilistic method especially stand out. ◦ As a college freshman he made a name for himself with a stunningly simple proof of Bertrand's postulate. ◦ He also discovered the first elementary proof of the prime number theorem along with Atle Selberg. ◦ He once recalled, "I fell in love with numbers at a young age. They were my friends. I could depend on them to always be there and always behave in the same way." ◦ At four he discovered negative numbers, telling his mother that "if you take 250 from 100, you get -150." ◦
Erdős had a special private vocabulary: "the SF" was God, "epsilon" meant a child, "bosses" were women, "slaves" were men, "captured" meant married, "liberated" divorced, "noise" was music, "poison" was alcohol, "preaching" meant giving a mathematics lecture, "Sam" the United States and "Joe" the Soviet Union. ◦ When he said someone had "died" he meant they had stopped doing mathematics; when he said someone had "left" the person had actually died. ◦ On seeing a particularly elegant proof he would exclaim, "This one's from the Book!" ◦ He described the SF as "the Supreme Fascist, the Number-One Guy Up There, God, who was always tormenting Erdős by hiding his glasses, stealing his Hungarian passport, or, worse yet, keeping to Himself the elegant solutions to all sorts of intriguing mathematical problems." ◦
Erdős expected his hosts to lodge him, feed him, do his laundry, and arrange transport to his next destination. ◦ He sustained his roughly 20-hour mathematical workdays with amphetamines and coffee. ◦ He discovered the first elementary proof of the prime number theorem along with Atle Selberg, though publication disagreements led to a bitter dispute between them. ◦
Erdős's modus operandi was to show up on the doorstep of a fellow mathematician, declare, "My brain is open," work with his host for a day or two until he was bored or his host was run down, and then move on to another home. ◦ During his visits he expected his hosts to lodge him, feed him, do his laundry, and arrange transport to his next destination. ◦ Throughout his career he offered cash payments for solutions to unresolved problems, ranging from $25 for problems just out of reach to $10,000 for problems both difficult and significant. ◦