✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers

archive.nytimes.com · 6,140 words · saved by 1 readers

It was dinnertime in Greenbrook, New Jersey, on a cold spring day in 1987, and Paul Erdös, then seventy-four, had lost four mathematical colleagues, who were sitting fifty feet in front of him, sipping green tea. Squinting, Erdös scanned the tables of the small Japanese restaurant, one arm held out to the side like a scarecrow's. He was angry with himself for letting his friends slip out of sight. His mistake was to pause at the coat cheek while they charged ahead. His arm was flapping wildly now, and he was coughing. "I don't understand why the SF has seen fit to send me a cold," he wheezed. (The SF is the Supreme Fascist, the Number-One Guy Up There, God, who was always tormenting Erdös by hiding his glasses, stealing his Hungarian passport, or, worse yet, keeping to Himself the elegant solutions to all sorts of intriguing mathematical problems.) "The SF created us to enjoy our suffering," Erdös said. "The sooner we die, the sooner we defy His plans." Erdös still didn't see his f

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers CHAPTER ONE The Man Who Loved Only Numbers The Story of Paul Erdös and the Search for Mathematical Truth By PAUL HOFFMAN Publisher Read the Review THE TWO-AND-A-HALF-BILLION- YEAR-OLD MAN Vegre nem butulok tovabb (Finally I am becoming stupider no more) --the epitaph Paul Erdös wrote for himself Paul Erdös was one of those very special geniuses, the kind who comes along only once in a very long while yet he chose, quite consciously I am sure, to share mathematics with mere mortals--like me. And for this, I will always be grateful to him. I will mis

Explore this link on the map →

related reading