Paul Erdős
Paul Erdős, also Pál Erdős, in English Paul Erdos or Paul Erdös (March 26, 1913 – September 20, 1996), was a famous Hungarian-born mathematician. He worked with hundreds of mathematicians on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory.
Paul Erdős | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Paul Erdős in 1992 | |
| Born | March 26, 1913 |
| Died | September 20, 1996 |
| 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 students | Bonifac Donat Joseph Kruskal Alexander Soifer |
| Notes | |
Note that he has an Erdős number of zero. | |
Erdős number
Because he wrote so many articles, friends created Erdős number. Erdős has a number of 0 (for being himself), and his direct collaborators were given the number 1. Their collaborators were given a number of 2, an so on.
The Erdős number was most likely first defined by Casper Goffman, a mathematician whose Erdős number is 1.
Paul Erdős Media
Counter-clockwise from left: Erdős, Fan Chung, and her husband Ronald Graham, Japan 1986
Erdős influenced many young mathematicians. In this 1985 photo taken at the University of Adelaide, Erdős explains a problem to Terence Tao—who was 10 years old at the time. Tao received the Fields Medal in 2006, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2007.
Grave of Erdős, Kozma Street Cemetery, Budapest
Other websites
- Erdős number project Archived 2006-08-06 at the Wayback Machine