What’s with the name?

“A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.”

– Paul Erdős

 

          Born on March 26, 1913, Paul Erdős was a Hungarian mathematician. Erdős was one   of the most prolific mathematicians to ever live, publishing over 1,500 papers in his lifetime. He collaborated with over 500 mathematicians. Because of this mathematicians will often quote their Erdős number. Erdős worked in many fields of mathematics: Number Theory, Analysis, Set Theory, Probability Theory, Approximation Theory, Graph Theory, and Discrete Mathematics. In particular, he was responsible for great advances in Ramsey Theory. He also often offered cash prizes for unsolved problems – ranging from only a few dollars to thousands of dollars. People receiving a check from Erdős would often not cash it, because the check itself was far more valuable in every sense of the word. These awards continued to be given out after his death by the (informal) administrator of these awards, Ronald Graham.

          He had many idiosyncrasies which made him memorable to those that knew him, or had only heard stories of him. For instance, he referred to mathematical lectures as “preaching”, lecturing as “torturing students”, music (except for Classical Music) as “noise”, and children as “epsilons.”  Erdős also spent much of his life living out of a suitcase, traveling from place to place to meet with his collaborators. For Erdős, Mathematics was an incredibly social activity. He also signed his name Paul Erdős P.G.O.M.. At 60, he added L.D., at 65, A.D., , at 70 L.D., and at 75 C.D.

• P.G.O.M.: Poor Great Old Man
• L.D.:  Living Dead
• A.D.:  Archaeological Discovery
• L.D.: Legally Dead
• C.D.: Counts Dead

Erdős died on September 20, 1996 at the age of 83. He will be remembered not only for his many publications, but also for his many memorable quotations. These include his references to particularly short, clever, or beautiful proofs as being “from the Book” – a book which supposedly contains the most elegant proofs of all mathematical statements. This later inspired the book Proofs from THE BOOK, which is a truly wonderful read. He also once uttered the famous quote at the top of this page, which inspired the name for this site, the truth of which can be witnessed at any mathematics conference.

The accent in the “o” in his name is a Hungarian accent, often referred to as the Hungarumlaut. In LaTeX, his name is typed as “Paul Erd\H{o}s.”