Maths Times Infinity > History > Erdos
Paul Erdõs
{26/3/1913 - 20/9/1996}
Very prolific mathematician. Worked with hundreds of other mathematicians. Like the concept of six degrees of Kevin Bacon, there's a thing called the Erdős number of a person. If you worked with him, you're a one. If you worked with someone who worked with him, you're a two. If you worked with one of *those* people, you're a three and so on. Paul himself has the special Erdős number of 0. His name is pronounced "air-dish".
There's a great book on him called "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers".
He was apparently very good at asking good questions. Maths questions. Breaking problems up into parts. Creating problems that were challenging but possible. In general, it's easy to create really easy or really hard problems but very tricky to find something in between. But he had a knack or acquired skill for this.
Born March 26th. Died Septeber 20th.