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A review by davidr
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth by Paul Hoffman
4.0
Paul Erdos was a prolific, well-known mathematician. He wrote over 1400 journal articles in various mathematical publications, many of them collaborations. Those people who collaborated with him earned an Erdos "number 1". Those who collaborated with someone who collaborated with him earned a "number 2", and so on.
To say that Erdos was "eccentric" would be an understatement. He had no home--he carried a suitcase with a single change of clothes in it, and traveled the world, visiting one mathematician after another. He would stay at a mathematician's home until he became unwelcome--and that was not long at all. Erdos only slept a few hours at night, so he kept his hosts pretty busy! He was physically inept, so help left trails and messes in his wake. The collection of anecdotes about his life are amusing, and usually center on his single-mindedness about mathematics.
Erdos' main area of expertise was number theory. Paul Hoffman has written a very readable book, expertly interleaving chapters about number theory with Erdos' biography. This gives a layman some understanding about the sorts of problems that Erdos solved. I learned some interesting things about mathematics, and also about the psychology of mathematicians. This was a fun book to read, and I can recommend it to anybody.
By the way, baseball great Hank Aaron earned an "Erdos number 1"--read the book if you are curious to find out why!
To say that Erdos was "eccentric" would be an understatement. He had no home--he carried a suitcase with a single change of clothes in it, and traveled the world, visiting one mathematician after another. He would stay at a mathematician's home until he became unwelcome--and that was not long at all. Erdos only slept a few hours at night, so he kept his hosts pretty busy! He was physically inept, so help left trails and messes in his wake. The collection of anecdotes about his life are amusing, and usually center on his single-mindedness about mathematics.
Erdos' main area of expertise was number theory. Paul Hoffman has written a very readable book, expertly interleaving chapters about number theory with Erdos' biography. This gives a layman some understanding about the sorts of problems that Erdos solved. I learned some interesting things about mathematics, and also about the psychology of mathematicians. This was a fun book to read, and I can recommend it to anybody.
By the way, baseball great Hank Aaron earned an "Erdos number 1"--read the book if you are curious to find out why!