Mathematician:Paul Erdős

In Hungarian: Erdős Pál. Hungarian mathematician known for the vast quantity of work he did (approximately 1500 papers).

Spent his entire life travelling the world looking for interesting mathematical problems to solve.

Perhaps most famous for his widespread collaborations (about 500 collaborators), from which the concept of the Erdős Number emerged. Found an elementary proof of the Prime Number Theorem at the same time as Atle Selberg. Exactly what happened in 1948 has been discussed a great deal in the years following. See Erdős-Selberg dispute for a fairly unbiased account.

Because of his widespread influence, there are many stories in circulation about Erdős, not all of which are completely true, so don't believe everything you read about him (even this!) - its source may be flawed.

Nationality
Hungarian

History

 * Born: 26 March 1913, Budapest, Hungary
 * Died: September 20, 1996, Warsaw, Poland

Theorems and Inventions

 * Erdős Conjecture on Arithmetic Progressions (still unsolved)
 * Cameron-Erdős Conjecture (with Peter Cameron)
 * Erdős-Rado Theorem (with Richard Rado)
 * Erdős-Ko-Rado Theorem (with Ke Zhao (Chao Ko) and Richard Rado)

Books and Papers
About 1500 papers, including:


 * 1949: On a new method in elementary number theory which leads to an elementary proof of the prime number theorem
 * 1968: A theorem of finite sets (in Theory of Graphs, co-edited with Gyula O. H. Katona)

Notable Quotes

 * "A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems."

Also see

 * 1998: Paul Hoffman: The Man Who Loved Only Numbers