Hungarian mathematician (1913–1996) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Paul Erdős, also Pál Erdős, in English Paul Erdos or Paul Erdös (March 26, 1913 – September 20, 1996), was a famous Hungarian-born mathematician. Throughout his career, he worked on and produced many mathematical conjectures and is known as one of the most productive mathematicians of the 20th century. Erdős worked on and put forward several problems in discrete mathematics, graph theory, number theory, mathematical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory. Much of his work was with discrete mathematics. He solved many unsolved problems. He challenged and worked on Ramsey theory, a part of mathematics that is about the requirements for order to appear. His work involved solving open problems rather than developing new kinds of mathematics.
Paul Erdős | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Paul Erdős in 1992 | |
| Born | March 26, 1913 |
| Died | September 20, 1996 (aged 83) |
| Nationality |  Hungarian |
| Alma mater | University of Pázmány Péter |
| Known for | Combinatorics Graph theory Number theory |
| Awards | Wolf Prize (1983/84) AMS Cole Prize (1951) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Princeton Purdue Notre Dame Then itinerant |
| Doctoral advisor | Leopold Fejér |
| Doctoral students | Bonifac Donat Joseph Kruskal Alexander Soifer |
| Notes | |
Note that he has an Erdős number of zero. | |
Erdős published almost 1,500 articles in his life, the most of any mathematician[1]He believed very strongly that mathematics was something you do with other people. He lived a life where he would travel from place to place without a set home, with his only aim of writing mathematical papers with other mathematicians. He was known for his way of doing mathematics with other people, which caused him to work with around 500 people[2] and also his strange way of living. Times magazine called him "The Oddball's Oddball".[3]He spent lots of time for mathematics, even as he got older. He died at a mathematics gathering in Warsaw[4]
Since Erdős worked with so many other mathematicians, the Erdős number was created, which is the number of steps for any mathematicians and Paul Erdős himself in terms of working together on an article. Erdős has a number of 0 (for being himself), and anyone who worked on an article with him was given the number 1. Anyone who worked with someone who worked with Erdős is given a number two, and so on.
Paul Erdős was born on 26 March 1913, in Budapest, Austria-Hungary[5] He was the only living child of his parents Anna (née Wilhelm) and Lajos Erdős (né Engländer). A few days before he was born his two sisters died because of scarlet fever.
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