Paul Erdős, or rather, Erdős Pál was one of the greatest mathematician of
the twentieth century.
He was a great mathematician in the usual sense, i.e., he proved an
army of theorems.
He mostly worked in number theory and in combinatorics, in fact he can be
called the most prominent figure of the latter subject.
But he also worked in set theory, analysis, approximation theory,
probability theory.
Perhaps he is best known for his elementary proof, with Atle Selberg,
of the prime number theorem.
He had a special ability to ask the right questions, and he enjoyed
imposing conjectures, specially in new topics. Frequently, his
conjectures made into central theorems, some generated deep results,
and some are still unsolved, indeed they seem to be very hard.
Finally Erdős, while constantly traveling around the globe,
ceaselessly worked with every person whom he could worked with,
starter or famous, told proofs, asked questions, listened to new ideas,
although jobless and powerless, he made enormous efforts to
organize the mathematicians' community.
He was well aware that in mathematics, anybody, literally anybody can prove
a new, interesting theorem, introduce a new method, and he was ready to
work with anyone, literally anyone, to follow anyone in a new path of
thought.
Online collection of Erdős's papers
His most famous conjectures,
Kuperberg's
list of Erdős problems,
Articles on his research,
Quotations on Paul Erdős
Jim Pitman's
Berkeley list
of Erdős' publications.
All of Erdős' papers will be made available on the Internet,
Erdős' books
-
Erdős Pál, Surányi János:
Válogatott fejezetek a számelméletből,
Tankönyvkiadó, 1959.
Second, extended edition:
Polygon, Szeged, 1996.
-
P. Erdős, J. Spencer: Probabilistic methods in combinatorics,
Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Academic Press, New York, 1974.
-
P. Erdős: The art of counting: Selected writings,
Edited by Joel Spencer and with a dedication by Richard Rado.
Mathematicians of Our Time, 5
The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.-London, 1973. xxiii+742 pp.
-
P. Erdős, R. L. Graham:
Old and New Problems and Results in Combinatorial Number Theory,
l'Enseigment Math., Monograph 28, 1980.
-
P. Erdős, A. Hajnal, A. Máté, R. Rado:
Combinatorial set theory:
Partition relations for cardinals,
Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1984.
-
P. Erdős, P. M. Gruber, J. Hammer:
Lattice Points, Pitman Monographs and Surveys in Pure and Applied
Mathematics, 39, Longman Sci. and Tech., John Wiley and Sons,
1989, viii+184 pp. ISBN 0-582-01478-6
-
P. Erdős, J. Surányi :
Topics in the theory of numbers,
Translated from the second Hungarian edition by Barry Guiduli.
Springer-Verlag, New York, 2003. xviii+287 pp. ISBN: 0-387-95320-5
Photos
Articles/Pages
-
László
Babai:
In and Out of Hungary,
Paul Erdös, His Friends, and Times,
in: Combinatorics: Paul Erdös is Eighty, 1993. (abridged)
- Ivars Peterson:
Groups, Graphs, and Paul Erdos, MAA Online
-
Herbert Fleischner:
My experiences with Paul Erdos
-
Cheryl Mootz:
The Mathematician Who Never Died:
The Mathematical Contributions of Paul Erdös
-
Bruce Schechter:
About Paul Erdős
-
Jean Pierre Boudine:
Paul Erdős: l'homme qui démontrait des théorèmes
,
la Recherche
-
Strehó Mária:
A legtöbb matematikusnak van Erdős Pál-száma,
Magyar Hírlap, 1998 március 12.
-
Cassandra W.:
Paul Erdos
,
Teen Ink
-
Anagrams on the name Paul Erdos
Books
On His life
-
Paul Hoffman: The Man Who Loved Only Numbers:
The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth,
Hyperion, 1998.
-
Bruce Schechter:
My Brain is Open: The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdős,
Simon & Schuster, 1998.
-
A tribute to Paul Erdős,
(eds A. Baker, B. Bollobás, A. Hajnal),
Cambridge University Press,
1990.
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Combinatorics, Paul Erdős is Eighty, 1-2, (eds. D. Miklos, V. T. Sos,
T. Szonyi), Bolyai Society Mathematical Studies, 1993, 1996.
-
The Mathematics of Paul Erdős, 1-2,
(eds R. L. Graham J. Nesetril), Spinger, 1997.
-
Fan Chung, Ron Graham:
Erdős on Graphs, His Legacy on Unsolved Problems,
A K Peters, 1998.
Conferences
Encyclopedias on Erdős
