[.ca] Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and ... (ISBN 0786863625)

From Amazon.com:
Paul Erdös was an amazing and prolific mathematician whose life as a world-wandering numerical nomad was legendary. He published almost 1500 scholarly papers before his death in 1996, and he probably thought more about math problems than anyone in history. Like a traveling salesman offering his thoughts as wares, Erdös would show up on the doorstep of one mathematician or another and announce, "My brain is open." After working through a problem, he'd move on to the next place, the next solution. Hoffman's book, like Sylvia Nasar's biography of John Nash, A Beautiful Mind, reveals a genius's life that transcended the merely quirky. But Erdös's brand of madness was joyful, unlike Nash's despairing schizophrenia. Erdös never tried to dilute his obsessive passion for numbers with ordinary emotional interactions, thus avoiding hurting the people around him, as Nash did. Oliver Sacks writes of Erdös: "A mathematical genius of the first order, Paul Erdös was totally obsessed with his subject--he thought and wrote mathematics for nineteen hours a day until the day he died. He traveled constantly, living out of a plastic bag, and had no interest in food, sex, companionship, art--all that is usually indispensable to a human life." The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is easy to love, despite his strangeness. It's hard not to have affection for someone who referred to children as "epsilons," from the Greek letter used to represent small quantities in mathematics; a man whose epitaph for himself read, "Finally I am becoming stupider no more"; and whose only really necessary tool to do his work was a quiet and open mind. Hoffman, who followed and spoke with Erdös over the last 10 years of his life, introduces us to an undeniably odd, yet pure and joyful, man who loved numbers more than he loved God--whom he referred to as SF, for Supreme Fascist. He was often misunderstood, and he certainly annoyed people sometimes, but Paul Erdös is no doubt missed. --Therese Littleton

My Favorite Book:
Thirty years ago I might have called Joyce's Ulysses my favorite book. Now I prefer things that are easier to get through yet somehow touch the stars, and this book portrays a sweet and gracious gentleman who loves children and mathematics and spends his life traveling from one mathematician's house to another with his two suitcases, exhausting his host with number theory for a week before moving on. Childlike himself, unable to cook an egg or read a timetable, Erdos's story appealed to me both for the math and, frankly, for his successful obsessiveness. He is second only to Einstein in terms of stature among 20th century mathematicians, and Hoffman's treatment of him is first-rate. (FYI I am also a fan of Simon Singh in the general-interest math genre.)

Entertaining, but lacks crucial information:
Paul Erdos' position in number theory of the 20th century is pretty much like Miles Davis' in jazz: in some way or another every important figure in number theory has worked with Erdos, much like every influential jazz musician collaborated with Davis at one point in their respective careers. This may explain the number theorists' obsession with calculating their "Erdos number" (a person is said to have Erdos number one if the person wrote a mathematical paper with Erdos; a person with Erdos number 2 is a person who wrote a paper with a person with Erdos number 1, and so on and so forth. For more information on Erdos number visit oakland.edu/~grossman/erdoshp.html). Erdos was a prolific mathematician. According to the statistics compiled in the site just mentioned, he was the one who authored the most papers in the entire history of mathematics, even surpassing Euler. The book is a collection of anecdotes related to Erdos. I say "anecdotes" because the book does not follow the usual birth-till-death timeline approach for biographies. Each chapter roughly corresponds to a story surrounding important collaborators of Erdos for a certain type of mathematical problem, not necessarily ordered chronologically. Erdos appears in these anecdotes as a person who cared dearly for his mother (he did not have his own family, not to mentioned he that he died a virgin according to his own words), mathematicians of all sorts regardless of their nationalities, children; as a person who despised anything that confined anyone's freedom, including God, or to put it in his words, SF, the "Supreme Fascist"; as a person who did not even have the ability to operate the most basic things, like operating air conditioners or even slicing a grapefruit with the right side of a knife (according to this book Erdos confessed that the first time he applied butter to bread was when he was in his 20s -- before Erdos' mother took care of him, and henceforth his friends/collaborators did); as a person whose earthly interest was zero (he never had a house -- he lived off at friends/collaborators), who gave everything he earned to any charity organization and every person in need (his entire possession fit into two suitcases); as a person whose love towards mathematics none equaled (he traveled incessantly to give lectures and worked 18 hours daily till he died); as a person who nevertheless feared death. The book's format may have been just right for describing Erdos, whose life perhaps had no other way of being described of other than through mathematical problems. However for 1) the lack of information re. Erdos' "real" accomplishments (omitted most likely for general accessibility), 2) the author's occasional deviation from Erdos (for e.g. an entire chapter devoted to Fermat's last theorem which almost has nothing to do with Erdos; retelling of the most "popular" paradoxes of mathematics) which I felt catering to commercialism, I do not feel that the book depicted Erdos' life the best. The book is at best an entertaining read of one of the most interesting and influential mathematicians of the past century.

Eminently Fascinating:
Having stopped learning math in high school, competent, but not excellent at it, this book was a great romp of mathematical trivia. As a biography it is a little scattered in focus, but the life of Paul Erdos was befitting of such an approach. One of the great minds in the history of math, more published than almost any other, thinking things only a handful of others could grasp, Erdos was a personification of the absent-minded thinker. Which could sometimes make for a hard subject to write the life of. Having never heard of Erdos until I read this book, it proved to be a competent and entertaining book about the man's life and quirks and some of his ideas. But the true strength of this book is its branching out into the ideas of the world of mathematics. Taking asides that last ten pages or more, Paul Hoffman explores the foundations and revolutions and some of the quirkier trivia tidbits of the world of mathematics. Making this work as much a fun romp through the interesting parts of math and part biography of a quixotic man who lived math. I have heard there is another biography of Erdos out there that deals more directly with his life and ideas, and if one were looking for a more focused biography, it would probably be a better choice. But The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is a great read for its insight and entertainment value. Yes, it made math fun, and for the most part understandable.

A Very Good Book About A Charming, Eccentric Genius:
Paul Hoffman, publisher of Encyclopedia Brittanica, has written a lively biography of Paul Erdos, a brilliant number theorist who spent his long and productive career with no permanent residence. Although Erdos had many oddities, such as the inability to handle some of the most mundane tasks such as taking a shower without pointing the nozzle in the wrong direction and getting water all over the floor, he was a very charming and lovable man, unlike, for example, John Nash throughout much of the latter's life. I think that a more accurate title would have been The Man Who Understood Only Numbers. Certainly he loved children and had no apparent malice towards anyone. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in people of unusual intelligence. This is not a math book. No knowledge of mathematics whatsoever is necessary for the enjoyment of this book and the appreciation of its subject.

A True Genius Walked amongst us..:
I did not intend to suggest I knew Erdos,I was just thinking that every once in a while a genius does appear and walks amongst we less gifted mortals.Although I've studied a lot of mathematics;but when one reads about Erdos,one feels like a baseball fan,who has not even played minor league ball,getting to see how a Major Leaguer ,and one of the best at that,thinks. If you would like to read about a man whose life in Mathematics was similar to Woody Guthrie's in music you will find this an excellent read.To enjoy this book you no more need to know mathematics any more than you need to read or compose music to enjoy reading about the life of Guthrie. Erdos,who put in 19-hour days proving and conjecturing,denied that he fell asleep during mathematics conferences."I wasn't sleeping",he would say."I was thinking." The book also tells us about Erdos's great friend,Ron Graham.They were referred to as the odd couple of mathematics; but so different from one another.Erdos never had a job that lasted more than an acedemic year;Graham would stay at Bell Labs his whole career,eventually becoming Chief Scientist.Graham had a complete family life ;Erdos had no family.Erdos became addicted to amphetamines.Graham bet him he couldn't quit.Erdos won and kept off drugs for a month and said "But I didn't get any work done.I'd get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper.I'd have no ideas,just like an ordinary person.You set mathematics back a month".