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Paul Erdős (2000)

mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk

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Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#51

Post by boomboomsubban »

pmiller2 wrote: post #46
ggm wrote: post #22

Had a mate who put him up, but for the non Erdós number reason: Erdós liked to play bridge a lot. So, practical group theory in the base-52 space..

Hmm... one of my professors who was a collaborator of Erdos is also a bridge player. Was Erdos any good at bridge?

So searching "Erdos bridge" reveals that Ivan Erdos was on the American bridge team in the 60's. Changing it to "Erdős contract bridge" shows it is mentioned in the book "The Mathematics of Paul Erdős II" but the section is paywalled.

Ask your professor, it could make for an interesting bit of his life that would otherwise be lost.

Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#52

Post by hervature »

savant_penguin wrote: post #31

If he dedicated most of his life to maths (to the absolute limits of what you can actually do) and still did not outpublish euler I can only wonder what living with euler must have been like

One thing that gave Euler a huge leg up against his peers at the time was his invention of functional notation. I think it is a very underrated advancement he gave while others focus on one of his many formulas/theorems/etc. It also gave him the ability to work much faster and prove things quicker and get them published before others. Whereas Erdos definitely had to compete with people who had the same tools as Erdos plus the ability to focus in a single subject.

Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#53

Post by hervature »

maxerickson wrote: post #37
Godel_unicode wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to prove that discovering calculus got harder, you would obviously need to show that the population of people who could discover it but didn't have prior knowledge of it was at least as large as when it was discovered. In addition, in order for there to be published (or even submitted) papers, you would need those people to not only not have any prior knowledge but to not encourter anyone with a highschool u…

Has anybody published their discovery of calculus here in the 21st century yet though?

Has the wheel gotten harder to invent since it hasn’t been invented in a million years? Your question makes no sense for the reasons pointed out by GP.

Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#54

Post by JonathanFly »

whalesalad wrote: post #13

He was also on amphetamines constantly. If I was on amphetamine all the time I’d get a lot accomplished as well.

>He was also on amphetamines constantly. If I was on amphetamine all the time I’d get a lot accomplished as well.

He started taking them in 1971, because he was depressed. He was 58 years old at the time and had been extremely productive for his whole career before that too.

Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#55

Post by maxerickson »

hervature wrote: post #53
maxerickson wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anybody published their discovery of calculus here in the 21st century yet though?

Has the wheel gotten harder to invent since it hasn’t been invented in a million years? Your question makes no sense for the reasons pointed out by GP.

It's dumb enough that you might not take it seriously.

Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#56

Post by AnimalMuppet »

maxerickson wrote: post #38
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly, you don't seem to mean Lebesgue...

I actually edited the word 'basic' in (before your comment, shortly after first submitting) because I recognize that I'm not a math historian.

Well... Lebesgue integration is a different basis from Reimann integration, so you might say it's a new basic method. If by "basic" you mean "high-school-calculus simple", it's probably not that. (Though the fundamental idea is simple enough to explain - see the Wikipedia article.)

Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#58

Post by cambalache »

djmips wrote: post #35
cambalache wrote: post #33

Even more impressive for Euler. Most (not all) of Erdos work is considered of very limited quality, a little better than solving quirky problems in number theory or combinatorics. Euler on the other hand is a class on his own. Just look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Leo... And as mentioned in the article and known by every mathematician there is a long list of things that were disc…

Maybe you could have been Claude Shannon but he already solved those things. Sometimes coming later, the low hanging fruit has already been picked.

That is very relative, coming later there is a lot more fruit to pick

Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#59

Post by cambalache »

pmiller2 wrote: post #41
cambalache wrote: post #33

Even more impressive for Euler. Most (not all) of Erdos work is considered of very limited quality, a little better than solving quirky problems in number theory or combinatorics. Euler on the other hand is a class on his own. Just look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Leo... And as mentioned in the article and known by every mathematician there is a long list of things that were disc…

> Most (not all) of Erdos work is considered of very limited quality Are you kidding? Do you have an example of a paper that you'd say was of "very limited quality?"

No. Are YOU kidding?

Here it is the list of Erdos papers:

https://users.renyi.hu/~p_erdos/Erdos.html

Please list which papers would you put at the same level of the work of Grothendieck, Poincare, Cartan, Banach, Kolmogorov, Goedel, Schwartz, Perelman or Tao?

Wikipedia explains it better than me:

" Erdős was one of the most prolific publishers of papers in mathematical history, comparable only with Leonhard Euler; Erdős published more papers, mostly in collaboration with other mathematicians, while Euler published more pages, mostly by himself.[37] Erdős wrote around 1,525 mathematical articles in his lifetime,[38] mostly with co-authors. He strongly believed in and practiced mathematics as a social activity,[39] having 511 different collaborators in his lifetime.[40]

In his mathematical style, Erdős was much more of a "problem solver" than a "theory developer" (see "The Two Cultures of Mathematics"[41] by Timothy Gowers for an in-depth discussion of the two styles, and why problem solvers are perhaps less appreciated). Joel Spencer states that "his place in the 20th-century mathematical pantheon is a matter of some controversy because he resolutely concentrated on particular theorems and conjectures throughout his illustrious career."[42] Erdős never won the highest mathematical prize, the Fields Medal, nor did he coauthor a paper with anyone who did,[43] a pattern that extends to other prizes.[44] He did win the Wolf Prize, where his contribution is described as "for his numerous contributions to number theory, combinatorics, probability, set theory and mathematical analysis, and for personally stimulating mathematicians the world over".[45] In contrast, the works of the three winners after were recognized as "outstanding", "classic", and "profound", and the three before as "fundamental" or "seminal". "

Re: Paul Erdős (2000)

#60

Post by klelatti »

cambalache wrote: post #33

Even more impressive for Euler. Most (not all) of Erdos work is considered of very limited quality, a little better than solving quirky problems in number theory or combinatorics. Euler on the other hand is a class on his own. Just look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Leo... And as mentioned in the article and known by every mathematician there is a long list of things that were disc…

"Is considered" by whom? Or just your opinion?

As others have commented I think that the language that you've used here - "very limited quality", "little better than solving quirky problems" - to describe the work Erdős did is very unfair.

He may not have been Euler but then Euler was pretty much unique.

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