Paul Erdos

I would have liked to have met this man, who was as eccentric as this visage here implies. This is none other than Paul Erdös, a Hungarian mathematician who published more papers than any other to date (over 1,500) and worked with so many other scholars (he co-authored with over 500) that math geeks know about the “Erdös number” which works like the six degrees of separation games and marks how close a mathematician is to Erdös.

Born in 1913, Erdös was the only surviving child of his parents, because his two older sisters died of scarlet fever only days before his birth. He was such a prodigy that at age four, if he knew someone’s birthday, he could figure out how many seconds they have lived. He was awarded a PhD in mathematics when he was only 21. He was well known for his unique lifestyle, which involved a nomadic existence — he pretty much crashed at his math friends’ houses his whole life. He’d take a suitcase around, show up with a typical declaration: “my brain’s open!”, work on some problems or theorems that he’d later publish, and move on. Because of his math skills (he pretty much founded the field of discrete mathematics), he earned a living giving guest lectures and presentations — he actually gave a lot of his money to charity.

Erdös (the “ö” is actually written with a double accent mark that I cannot recreate in Instagram) was also famous for his witticisms. An agnostic Jewish atheist, he referred to God as “SF”: the supreme fascist. But he talked about a divine book — “the Book” — in which God kept every elegant mathematical proof for all theorems possible. He wanted to spend all his energies on math and had a sense of humor about his mortality, suggesting that his own epitaph read “finally I’ve stopped getting dumber”.

Erdös actually passed away of a heart attack at age 83 while at a conference, shortly after having solved another math problem. I particularly liked the following quote of his: “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.”