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A review by paulogonzalez
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers by Paul Hoffman
4.0
The book is in large part a work in oral history based on the recollections of Erdös and his collaborators and their partners. And it is especially a great journey through 20th century mathematics and its main characters (in fact, there is a little too of some older maths). Which is Erdös' own story, since he dedicated his life to traveling visiting his collaborators.
Erdös was different from everyone, he had an eccentric and appealing personality, a force in the mathematics of the last hundred years, especially in number theory and prime numbers. A child prodigy, a genius in his adulthood with no home and no worries about money (he give away most of what he received by his work).
His mathematical insight was amazing, and impressive was his ability to create and cope with different problems, as well as his habit of writing joint papers whom whoever he met. Besides, I was surprised that he used drugs, which I did not know.
A life worth knowing, no doubt, and here it is well written by Hoffman, who it is not a mathematician but knew how to capture that world very well from his talks with Erdös himself and many other professional mathematicians.
Erdös was different from everyone, he had an eccentric and appealing personality, a force in the mathematics of the last hundred years, especially in number theory and prime numbers. A child prodigy, a genius in his adulthood with no home and no worries about money (he give away most of what he received by his work).
His mathematical insight was amazing, and impressive was his ability to create and cope with different problems, as well as his habit of writing joint papers whom whoever he met. Besides, I was surprised that he used drugs, which I did not know.
A life worth knowing, no doubt, and here it is well written by Hoffman, who it is not a mathematician but knew how to capture that world very well from his talks with Erdös himself and many other professional mathematicians.