

A Life that Added Up to Something: Paul Erdos (1996) - Radix
http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~nevai/ERDOS/erdos_washington_post.html

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aneesh
Paul Erdős was quite a character. Read _The Man Who Loved Only Numbers_ for
some fun stories about him.

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jyothi
Apart from his Other idiosyncratic elements 'died' and 'left' of Erdős
vocabulary I found the following particularly amusing:

# children were referred to as "epsilons" (because in mathematics,
particularly calculus, an arbitrarily small positive quantity is commonly
denoted ε);

# to give a mathematical lecture was "to preach" and

# to give an oral exam to a student was "to torture" him/her.

~~~
Create
The second two are quite common in Hungarian (i.e. any lecture given from a
pedestal/"cathedra").

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patrickg-zill
Funny anecdote from Sun bigwig: using your Erdos number to decide who goes
first in line...

[http://blogs.sun.com/stern/entry/seating_algorithms_and_why_...](http://blogs.sun.com/stern/entry/seating_algorithms_and_why_whit)

~~~
bitdiddle
Well my Erdos number is 5. Can I get a few more HN karma points for it :)

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zandorg
A nice read. I love reading about maths, just not doing it.

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jyothi
I read "The Man Who Knew Infinity" - Ramanujan's biography and it was
fantastic read.

[http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Knew-Infinity-
Ramanujan/dp/068...](http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Knew-Infinity-
Ramanujan/dp/0684192594) Do check out recommendations by Amazon, seems like a
great set of books.

~~~
bitdiddle
This was a great book. The story about the taxi cab number 1729 was staggering
to me in what it implied about how Ramanujan's mind worked. It was also
profoundly sad that because the little formal exposure he had was from a book
where there were no proofs he thought that one merely stated results. Many
PhDs have since been awarded for proofs of some of these results.

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Evgeny
For his epitaph he suggested, "I've finally stopped getting dumber."

~~~
soundsop
Végre nem butulok tovább. [Finally I am becoming stupider no more.]

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bitdiddle
Hank Aaron has an Erdos number of 1

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RiderOfGiraffes
No, he hasn't. Quoting WikiPedia:

    
    
        It is jokingly said that Baseball Hall of Famer
        Hank Aaron has an Erdős number of 1 because they
        both autographed the same baseball when Emory
        University awarded them honorary degrees on the
        same day. Erdős numbers have also been humorously
        assigned to an infant, a horse, and several actors.
    

The fundamental principle underlying the Erdos number is collaboration. If you
didn't work together, you don't get the credit.

Color me humorless if you like, but I would've thought hackers would care
about being accurate and precise.

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bitdiddle
yes it is jokingly said. The book cited above (The man who knew only numbers")
is a great read. It has a picture of Erdos with Aaron receiving honorary
degrees.

I studied graph theory for a year at MSU with Edgar Palmer in 1981. At the
time the proof of the four color conjecture, which was very controversial
because it used a computer program (egads!!) was making the rounds. Palmer
related many interesting stories about Erdos and also had us work on some of
the problems for which Erdos had offered rewards.

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andeka
I love hacker news.

