The Man Who Loved Only Numbers - Paul Hofman on Paul Erdos [video] | Hacker News Reader

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers - Paul Hofman on Paul Erdos [video]

vega.org.uk

32 pointscsabapalfi10 comments

I watched this, and it's really interesting. From what I remember (and leaving out his astonishing achievements, with which I assume everyone is familiar): Erdos would have no stable residence, instead he would travel the world with all his possessions packed inside a single suitcase. He would 'crash' at the homes of various mathematicians, often unexpectedly. While visiting, he would start banging a spoon to a pan in the middle of the night, to wake up his host mathematicians and insist that they start working on a Math problem. He was very attached to this mother, and her death left him somewhat baffled. He was celibate, and in one interview he says "he likes women, but dislikes what they stand for".

There is also a very nice documentary on Erdos on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iflQseSSfA

vega.org.uk has some nice videos thanks for the link.

I read Hoffman's book some time ago and found it interesting but a tad repetitious. A Google for the Atlantic Monthly article reveals a much tighter piece of writing. The video gives me a voice to put to the writing.

Video at 12:58 or so

"This is a man who had no home... all his possessions fit into one small suitcase and some plastic bag that he had from some shopping store in Budapest"

There is a core of sadness there. 2nd world war was rough on a whole generation of Europeans, and the writer George Perec exhibited similar frenetic activity and the use of arcane games to fend things off? Erdos's chosen game field was more useful of course.

>There is a core of sadness there. 2nd world war was rough on a whole generation of Europeans, and the writer George Perec exhibited similar frenetic activity and the use of arcane games to fend things off? Erdos's chosen game field was more useful of course.

I think you are completely missing the point here. Erdős chose to live like that. The title "the man who only loved numbers" is not a hyperbole.

Our choices may not always be made for reasons we can articulate or even know.

Simon Norton (finite group theory, worked with Conway) also finds close companionship with numbers and had a less intensely isolated childhood than Erdos but one that has similarities.

I think we may have to agree to disagree here.

Excellent talk. When describing the map coloring problem I think he mean to say the minimum number of colors, required to color the countries such that no two countries that border each other have the same color.

Is there a way to fetch this as a file instead? I took a quick look at the source but couldn't see a readily available source to DL.

One has to wonder if his heavy use of amphetamines caused his eccentricity; or if his eccentricity led him to use amphetamines heavily.

i suspect the latter. i was unaware of the his early life story before watching this video. there is necessarily some kind of eccentricity embedded in that kind of experience.

anyway, really inspiring video. it seems that upon hearing "erdos" people too often just think, "oh, right, the probablistic method is really cool," or (far-far worse), "yeah, taking amphetamines and doing math is where it's at," but the sense of community, collaboration, and kindness described in the video is a broader and further reaching legacy than any single fact about the man's life. there's a kind of transitivity to that attitude (in any walk of life). one of the kindest mathematicians i've ever met is adjacent to erdos, and i don't think that's entirely coincidental.

Maybe. That's the funny thing about human beings. We fear the unknown and uncertainty so we create familiarity through higher order structures like society. Yet we balk at this seemingly imposed order and crave novelty and uncertainty. Erdos' answer to the question is perhaps a bit extreme, but nobody can deny that he positively impacted those around him and lived his life authentically.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com