Paul Erdős

Pál Erdős (delivery in Hungarian, also ortographié Paul Erdős , Paul Erdös or Paul Erdos ) is a Hungarian mathematician, born the March 26th 1913 with Budapest (Hungary) and deceased the September 20th 1996 with Warsaw (Poland).

Biography

The life of Paul Erdös very whole was devoted to its research tasks. Living in the most total destitution, he is a very prolific researcher, all confused disciplines, with more: 1500 papers of research published. In particular, many these papers aimed studying its fields of predilection (Graph theory, Théorie of the numbers, Combinatoire) under different angles, and at unceasingly improving elegance of the demonstrations.

One year old when occurs the First World War, Erdös sees his/her father captured by the Russian army. His/her mother, fearing to be able to take care on her children out of the hearth, consequently prefers to engage a tutor. This one, mathematics professor, transmit however itself to him the taste of this discipline, which will lead the Erdös young person to be interested very early in mathematical problems.

Having obtained its thesis of mathematics in Hungary in 1934, its Jewish origins force it to be exiled initially with the Université of Manchester then in the United States. He works with the Université of Princeton, then is then invited by Ulam with the Université James Madison. It is at that time that he arrives, with the mathematician Atle Selberg, to establish an elegant proof of the Théorème of the prime numbers. But Selberg publishes only the document, and obtains the Médaille Fields.

Installed to Purdue in Illinois, Erdös is invited to join the development program of the American atomic bomb in 1943, but its frankness ruins it during the talks. It is only in 1948 that it can turn over to Hungary to find its sunken family of Déportation. A few years later, in 1950, the Maccarthysme beats full sound in the United States and he is shown of Communisme. Consequently, it is not authorized any more to circulate in the United States.

Installed during the years 1960 in Israel, Erdös can again press the American ground only in 1963. He consequently undertakes a career of researcher and itinerant professor, and ends up dying in his hotel room at the 83 years age.

Anecdotes

the particularly prolific character of Erdös brought the creation of the “Nombre of Erdös”, announcing the degree of collaboration of a researcher with Erdös. This last has by definition number 0. The mathematicians having published a paper of research cosigné by him have as a number of Erdös 1. The researchers having published with the latter have a number of Erdös of 2 (like Albert Einstein), and so on by Récurrence. The people who never wrote mathematical article, just as those not having a joint author which is connected to Erdös in the way described above, have a number of Erdös equal to $\ infty$ . In 1998, the greatest number finished of known Erdös of a mathematician in activity was of 7.
When Hardy and Erdös met, Hardy was 57 years old and felt its mathematical capacities to decrease. He liked to say that mathematics belongs to youth: Welsh died in twenty and one years, Abel at twenty-seven Sept. Riemann to forty. I do not know an example of a major progress in mathematics due to a man of more than fifty years. Erdös, which was only 21 years old, was too young to know that it would become one of the most famous counterexamples of the Conjecture of Hardy.
Erdös continued to travel and give conferences until its death. Questioned on its desire to continue to make mathematics in spite of its great age, he answered: The first signs of senility are when a man forgets the theorems. The second sign, it is when he forgets to close his fly. The third, it is when he forgets to open it!
to remove it from its mania of the Amphetamine S, which had occurred with died of his/her mother in 1971, the director of the mathematical section of the Laboratoires Beautiful had bet 500 US Dollar to him which it would not manage to cease consuming them for one month. After a few weeks, Erdös returned to find Graham and informs it: Graham, front, when I looked at a white sheet, my spirit were full with ideas. Today, all that I see it is a white sheet. Erdös won the bet, but complained about what Graham had delayed one month progress of mathematics…
Paul Erdös heard one day that the geologists estimated the age of the Earth at four billion and half years. Remembering that, in his youth, one allotted to planet only two billion them, it gave for title to an autobiographical conference: My the first Two Billion years and half in mathematics
At the day of its sixty years, Paul Erdös decided to sign all its letters by Paul Erdös L.D. (“L.D.” for living room dead , “death living”).
the conversation of Erdös was rather esoteric. His/her friends included/understood it perfectly when he affirmed to be himself extremely well given of the influenza which the S.F has good year to send to him (“S.F. ” for supreme Fasciste, i.e. God), or that it epsilon of Charles still grew (Epsilon, letter Greek employee to indicate a negligible quantity, designates a child).
One of the short news of Sonates of bar of the oulipien Herve Tellier is a homage to Paul Erdös, that the writer had met little before his death.
One of the favorite maxims of Erdös was: Sometimes “It is necessary to complicate a problem to simplify the solution of it”.
Another sentence celebrates of Erdös: " a mathematician is a machine which transforms the coffee into théorèmes".

Reference

Paul Hoffman, Erdös, the man who liked only the numbers, Éditions Belin, 2000. ISBN 2-7011-2539-1

See too

Conjecture of Erdős-Burr

External bonds

Biography of Erdős].
The Erdos Number Project, on the numbers of Erdös.
On Paul Erdős

Simple: Paul Erdős