Katana VentraIP

Paul Erdős

Paul Erdős (Hungarian: Erdős Pál [ˈɛrdøːʃ ˈpaːl]; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures[2] of the 20th century.[3] Erdős pursued and proposed problems in discrete mathematics, graph theory, number theory, mathematical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory.[4] Much of his work centered around discrete mathematics, cracking many previously unsolved problems in the field. He championed and contributed to Ramsey theory, which studies the conditions in which order necessarily appears. Overall, his work leaned towards solving previously open problems, rather than developing or exploring new areas of mathematics.

The native form of this personal name is Erdős Pál. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.

Paul Erdős

(1913-03-26)26 March 1913

Budapest, Austria-Hungary

20 September 1996(1996-09-20) (aged 83)

Warsaw, Poland

Hungarian

Royal Hungarian Pázmány Péter University

Namesakes A very large number of results and conjectures (more than 1,500 articles), and a very large number of coauthors (more than 500)

Wolf Prize (1983/84)
AMS Cole Prize (1951)

Pure mathematics

Victoria University of Manchester

Lipót Fejér

Joseph Kruskal

Erdős published around 1,500 mathematical papers during his lifetime, a figure that remains unsurpassed.[5] He firmly believed mathematics to be a social activity, living an itinerant lifestyle with the sole purpose of writing mathematical papers with other mathematicians. He was known both for his social practice of mathematics, working with more than 500 collaborators, and for his eccentric lifestyle; Time magazine called him "The Oddball's Oddball".[6] He devoted his waking hours to mathematics, even into his later years—indeed, his death came at a mathematics conference in Warsaw.[7] Erdős's prolific output with co-authors prompted the creation of the Erdős number, the number of steps in the shortest path between a mathematician and Erdős in terms of co-authorships.

Children were referred to as "" (because in mathematics, particularly calculus, an arbitrarily small positive quantity is commonly denoted by the Greek letter (ε)).

epsilons

Women were "bosses" who "captured" men as "slaves" by marrying them. Divorced men were "liberated".

People who stopped doing mathematics had "died", while people who died had "left".

Alcoholic drinks were "poison".

Music (except classical music) was "noise".

To be considered a hack was to be a "Newton".

To give a mathematical lecture was "to preach".

Mathematical lectures themselves were "sermons".

[77]

To give an oral exam to students was "to torture" them.

 – including conjectures, numbers, prizes, and theorems

List of topics named after Paul Erdős

Box-making game

 – collection of finitely many residue classes whose union contains every integer

Covering system

 – property of undirected graphs related to their representations in spaces

Dimension (graph theory)

 – theorem that an 𝑛-vertex graph that does not have a simple cycle of length 2𝑘 can only have O(𝑛¹⁺¹ꜘᵏ) edges

Even circuit theorem

 – Graph of triangles with a shared vertex

Friendship graph

Minimum overlap problem

 – Nonconstructive method for mathematical proofs

Probabilistic method

 – Subfield of number theory

Probabilistic number theory

 – Group of prominent Hungarian scientists

The Martians (scientists)

(2003) [1999]. Math and mathematicians : the history of math discoveries around the world. Baker, Lawrence W. Detroit, Mich.: U X L. ISBN 978-0787638139. OCLC 41497065.

Bruno, Leonard C.

Schechter, Bruce (1998). . New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-84635-4.

My Brain is Open: The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdős

(December 1996). "A Life of Mathematics – Paul Erdos, 1913-1996" (PDF). Focus. 16 (6). Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America: 4. Retrieved 6 May 2022.

Bollobás, Béla

(1998). The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth. London: Fourth Estate Ltd. ISBN 978-1-85702-811-9.

Hoffman, Paul

; Ziegler, Günther (2014). Proofs from THE BOOK. Berlin; New York: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-44205-0. ISBN 978-3-662-44204-3.

Aigner, Martin

Erdős's Google Scholar profile

Searchable collection of (almost) all papers of Erdős

Database of problems proposed by Erdős

O'Connor, John J.; , "Paul Erdős", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews

Robertson, Edmund F.

at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

Paul Erdős

Jerry Grossman at Oakland University.

The Erdös Number Project

– Royal Society public lecture by Paul Hoffman (video)

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers

Radiolab: Numbers, with a story on Paul Erdős

Fan Chung, "Open problems of Paul Erdős in graph theory"