The Man Who Loved Only Numbers - Softcover

Hoffman, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1857028112 ISBN 13: 9781857028119

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 1998

Synopsis

A biography of a mathematical genius. Paul Erdos was the most prolific pure mathematician in history and, arguably, the strangest too.

In The Man Who Loved Only Numbers Paul Hoffman, former Editor-in-Chief of Discover magazine, describes the life of Paul Erdos, Hungarian mathematical genius. Born in 1913 in Budapest, Erdos was born the very day his two sisters died of scarlet fever. His mother, fearing childhood contagion, refused her son conventional schooling. Home alone, Erdos did mental arithmetic. At three he could multiply three digit numbers in his head. At four he began looking for patterns amongst the prime integers. It was the start of a life consumed by mathematics. For six decades Erdos had no job, no hobbies, no wife, no home; he never learnt to cook, do laundry, drive a car and died a virgin. Instead he travelled the world with his mother in tow, arriving at the doorstep of esteemed mathematicians declaring ‘My brain is open’. He travelled until his death at 83, racing across four continents to prove as many theorems as possible, fuelled by a diet of espresso and amphetamines. With more than 1,500 papers written or co-written, a daily routine of 19 hours of mathematics a day, seven days a week, Paul Erdos was one of the most extrordinary thinkers of our times.

About this title

Review

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 maths problems than anyone in history. Like a travelling 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 the life of a genius who 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 travelled 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

Review

On The Man Who Loved Only Numbers:

'Paul Hoffman, in this marvellous biography, gives us a vivid and strangely moving portrait of this singular creature, one that brings out not only Erdos's genius and his oddness, but his warmth and sense of fun, the joyfulness of his strange life.'
Oliver Sacks

'Enthralling. A biography which conveys the wonder of mathematics by focusing on one of its most devoted practitioners.' Simon Singh, Observer

'Hoffman's book brilliantly reflects the man and his work: chaotic, eccentric and intriguing.' Focus

'One of the most accessible and engaging introductions to the world of pure mathematics you are ever likely to come across.'
Graham Farmelo, Sunday Telegraph

Edition details

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1857028112
• ISBN 13: 9781857028119
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 302