<Archive Obituary> Paul Erdos (September 20th 1996)
Bill Schenley
Photo: http://primehead.com/pics/Paul_Erdos.jpg
FROM: The New York Times (September 24th 1996) ~
By Gina Kolata
Paul Erdos, a legendary mathematician who was
so devoted to his subject that he lived as a
mathematical pilgrim with no home and no job,
died on Friday in Warsaw. He was 83.
The cause of death was a heart attack, according
to an E-mail message sent out this weekend by
Dr. Miki Simonovits, a mathematician at the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, who was a close
friend.
Dr. Erdos (pronounced AIR-dosh) was attending
a mathematics meeting in Warsaw when he died,
Dr. Simonovits reported.
The news, only now reaching the world's
mathematicians, has come as a blow.
Dr. Ronald L. Graham, the director of the
information sciences research center at AT&T
Laboratories, said, ''I'm getting E-mail messages
from around the world, saying, 'Tell me it isn't
so.' ''
Never, mathematicians say, has there been an
individual like Paul Erdos. He was one of the
century's greatest mathematicians, who posed
and solved thorny problems in number theory
and other areas and founded the field of discrete
mathematics, which is the foundation of computer
science. He was also one of the most prolific
mathematicians in history, with more than 1,500
papers to his name. And, his friends say, he was
also one of the most unusual.
Dr. Erdos ''is on the short list for our century,''
said Dr. Joel H. Spencer, a mathematician at
New York University's Courant Institute of
Mathematical Sciences.
Dr. Graham said, ''He's among the top 10.''
Dr. Ernst Straus, who worked with both
Albert Einstein and Dr. Erdos, wrote a tribute to
Dr. Erdos shortly before his own death in 1983.
He said of Dr. Erdos: ''In our century, in which
mathematics is so strongly dominated by 'theory
doctors,' he has remained the prince of problem
solvers and the absolute monarch of problem
posers.'' Dr. Erdos, he continued, is ''the Euler
of our time,'' referring to the great 18th-century
mathematician, Leonhard Euler, whose name is
spoken with awe in mathematical circles.
Stooped and slight, often wearing socks and
sandals, Dr. Erdos stripped himself of all the
quotidian burdens of daily life: finding a place to
live, driving a car, paying income taxes, buying
groceries, writing checks. ''Property is nuisance,''
he said.
Concentrating fully on mathematics, Dr. Erdos
traveled from meeting to meeting, carrying a
half-empty suitcase and staying with
mathematicians wherever he went. His colleagues
took care of him, lending him money, feeding
him, buying him clothes and even doing his taxes.
In return, he showered them with ideas and
challenges -- with problems to be solved and
brilliant ways of attacking them.
Dr. Laszlo Babai of the University of Chicago,
in a tribute written to celebrate Dr. Erdos's 80th
birthday, said Dr. Erdos's friends ''care for him
fondly, repaying in small ways for the light he
brings into their homes and offices.''
Mathematicians like to brag about their
connections to Dr. Erdos by citing their ''Erdos
number.''
A person's Erdos number is 1 if he or she has
published a paper with Dr. Erdos. It is 2 if he or
she haspublished with someone who has
published with Erdos, and so on. At last count,
Dr. Erdos had 458 collaborators, Dr. Graham
said. An additional 4,500 mathematicians had an
Erdos number of 2, Dr. Graham added. He said
so many mathematicians were still at work on
problems they had begun with Dr. Erdos that
another 50 to 100 papers with Dr. Erdos's name
on them were expected to be published after his
death.
Dr. Graham, whose Erdos number is 1, handled
Dr. Erdos's money for him, setting aside an
''Erdos room'' in his house for the chore. He said
Dr. Erdos had given away most of the money he
earned from lecturing at mathematics conferences,
donating it to help students or as prizes for s
olving problems he had posed. Dr. Erdos left
behind only $25,000 when he died, Dr. Graham
said, and he plans to confer with other
mathematicians about how to give it away to help
mathematics.
Dr. Graham said Dr. Erdos's ''driving force was
his desire to understand and to know.'' He added,
''You could think of it as Erdos's magnificent
obsession. It determined everything in his life.''
Dr. Spencer, of New York University, who also
has an Erdos number of 1, said, ''He was always
searching for mathematical truths.'' He added:
''Erdos had an ability to inspire. He would take
people who already had talent, that already had
some success, and just take them to an entirely new
level. His world of mathematics became the world
we all entered.''
Born in Hungary in 1913, Dr. Erdos was a cosseted
mathematical prodigy. At age 3, Dr. Graham said,
Dr. Erdos discovered negative numbers for himself
when he subtracted 250 degrees from 100 degrees
and came up with 150 degrees below zero. A few
years later, he amused himself by solving problems
he had invented, like how long would it take for a
train to travel to the sun.
Dr. Erdos had two older sisters who died of
scarlet fever a few days before he was born, so his
mother became very protective of him. His parents,
who were mathematics teachers, took him out of
public school after just a few years, Dr. Graham said,
and taught him at home with the help of a German
governess. And, Dr. Graham said, Dr. Erdos's
mother coddled him. ''Erdos had never buttered his
own toast until he was 21 years old,'' Dr. Graham
said. He never married and left no immediate
survivors.
When Dr. Erdos was 20, he made his mark as a
mathematician, discovering an elegant proof for a
famous theorem in number theory. The theorem,
Chebyshev's theorem, says that for each number
greater than one, there is always at least one prime
number between it and its double. A prime number
is one that has no divisors other than itself and 1.
Although his research spanned a variety of areas
of mathematics, Dr. Erdos kept up his interest in
number theory for the rest of his life, posing and
solving problems that were often simple to state
but notoriously difficult to solve and that, like
Chebyshev's theorem, involved relationships
between numbers. ''He liked to say that if you can
state a problem in mathematics that's unsolved
and over 100 years old, it is probably a problem
in number theory,'' Dr. Graham said.
Dr. Erdos, like many mathematicians, believed
that mathematical truths are discovered, not
invented. And he had an evocative way of conveying
that notion. He spoke of a Great Book in the sky,
maintained by God, that contained the most elegant
proofs of every mathematical problem. He used to
joke about what he might find if he could just have
a glimpse of that book.
He would also muse about the perfect death.
It would occur just after a lecture, when he had just
finished presenting a proof and a cantankerous
member of the audience would have raised a hand
to ask, ''What about the general case?'' In response,
Dr. Erdos used to say, he would reply, ''I think I'll
leave that to the next generation,'' and fall over dead.
Dr. Erdos did not quite achieve his vision of the
perfect death, Dr. Graham said, but he came close.
''He died with his boots on, in hand-to-hand
combat with one more problem,'' Dr. Graham said.
''It was the way he wanted to go.''
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Photo:
http://www.wolffund.org.il/admin/user_files/paul_erdos.jpg
Paul Erdos in art: http://www.orgnet.com/alters2.gif
http://www.umpa.ens-lyon.fr/JME/Vol1Num4/Erdos.jpeg