My Brain is Open: The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos - Softcover

Schechter, Bruce

 
9780684859804: My Brain is Open: The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0684859807 ISBN 13: 9780684859804
Verlag: Simon & Schuster, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

Paul Erdõs, one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, and certainly the most eccentric, was internationally recognized as a prodigy by age seventeen. Hungarian-born Erdõs believed that the meaning of life was to prove and conjecture. His work in the United States and all over the world has earned him the titles of the century's leading number theorist and the most prolific mathematician who ever lived. Erdõs's important work has proved pivotal to the development of computer science, and his unique personality makes him an unforgettable character in the world of mathematics. Incapable of the smallest of household tasks and having no permanent home or job, he was sustained by the generosity of colleagues and by his own belief in the beauty of numbers.
Witty and filled with the sort of mathematical puzzles that intrigued Erdõs and continue to fascinate mathematicians today, My Brain Is Open is the story of this strange genius and a journey in his footsteps through the world of mathematics, where universal truths await discovery like hidden treasures and where brilliant proofs are poetry.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bruce Schechter holds a Ph.D. in physics from M.I.T. and is a former editor at Physics Today and a former staff writer at Discover. He is the author of The Path of No Resistance, a book about superconductivity.

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Chapter One: Traveling

The call might come at midnight or an hour before dawn -- mathematicians are oddly unable to handle the arithmetic of time zones. Typically, a thickly accented voice on the other end of the line would abruptly begin: "I am calling from Berlin. I want to speak to Erdõs."

"He's not here yet."

"Where is he?"

"I don't know."

"Why don't you know?" Click!

Neither are mathematicians always observant of the social graces.

For more than sixty years mathematicians around the world have been roused from their abstract dreams by such calls, the first of the many disruptions that constituted a visit from Paul Erdõs. The frequency of the calls would increase over the next several days and would culminate with a summons to the airport, where Erdõs himself would appear, a short, frail man in a shapeless old suit, clutching two small suitcases that contained all of his worldly possessions. Stepping off the plane he would announce to the welcoming group of mathematicians, "My brain is open!"

Paul Erdõs's brain, when open, was one of the wonders of the world, an Ali Baba's cave, glittering with mathematical treasures, gems of the most intricate cut and surpassing beauty. Unlike Ali Baba's cave, which was hidden behind a huge stone in a remote desert, Erdõs and his brain were in perpetual motion. He moved between mathematical meetings, universities, and corporate think tanks, logging hundreds of thousands of miles. "Another roof, another proof," as he liked to say. "Want to meet Erdõs?" mathematicians would ask. "Just stay here and wait. He'll show up." Along the way, in borrowed offices, guest bedrooms, and airplane cabins, Erdõs wrote in excess of 1,500 papers, books, and articles, more than any other mathematician who ever lived. Among them are some of the great classics of the twentieth century, papers that opened up entire new fields and became the obsession and inspiration of generations of mathematicians.

The meaning of life, Erdõs often said, was to prove and conjecture. Proof and conjecture are the tools with which mathematicians explore the Platonic universe of pure form, a universe that to many of them is as real as the universe in which they must reluctantly make their homes and livings, and far more beautiful. "If numbers aren't beautiful, I don't know what is," Erdõs frequently remarked. And although, like all mathematicians, he was forced to make his home in the temporal world, he rejected worldly encumbrances. He had no place on earth he called home, nothing resembling a conventional year-round, nine-to-five job, and no family in the usual sense of the word. He arranged his life with only one purpose, to spend as many hours a day as possible engaged in the essential, life-affirming business of proof and conjecture.

For Erdõs, the mathematics that consumed most of his waking hours was not a solitary pursuit but a social activity, a movable feast. One of the great mathematical discoveries of the twentieth century was the simple equation that two heads are better than one. Ever since Archimedes traced his circles in the sand, mathematicians, for the most part, have labored alone -- that is, until some forgotten soul realized that mathematics could be done anywhere. Only paper and pencil were needed, and those were not strictly essential. A table-cloth would do in a pinch, or the mathematician could carry his equations in his head, like a chessmaster playing blindfolded. Strong coffee, and in Erdõs's case even more powerful stimulants, helped too. Mathematicians began to frequent the coffeehouses of Budapest, Prague, and Paris, which led to the quip often attributed to Erdõs: "A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems." Increasingly, mathematical papers became the work of two, three, or more collaborators. That radical transformation of how mathematics is created is the result of many factors, not the least of which was the infectious example set by Erdõs.

Erdõs had more collaborators than most people have aquaintances. He wrote papers with more than 450 collaborators -- the exact number is still not known, since Erdõs participated in the creation of new mathematics until the last day of his life, and his collaborators are expected to continue writing and publishing for years. The briefest encounter could lead to a publication -- for scores of young mathematicians a publication that could become the cornerstone of their life's work. He would work with anyone who could keep up with him, the famous or the unknown. Having been a child prodigy himself, he was particularly interested in meeting and helping to develop the talents of young mathematicians. Many of the world's leading mathematicians owe their careers to an early meeting with Erdõs.

Krishna Alladi, who is now a mathematician at the University of Florida, is one of the many young mathematicians whom Erdõs helped. In 1974, when Alladi was an undergraduate in Madras, India, he began an independent investigation of a certain number theoretic function. His teachers could not help Alladi with his problem, nor could his father, who was a theoretical physicist and head of the Madras Institute of Mathematics. Alladi's father told some of his knowledgeable friends about his son's difficulty, and they suggested that he write to Erdõs.

Because Erdõs was constantly on the move, Alladi sent a letter to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In an astonishingly short time, Alladi heard from Erdõs, who said he would soon be lecturing in Calcutta. Could Alladi come there to meet him? Unfortunately, Alladi had examinations and could not attend, so he sent his father in his place to present the results of his research. After his father's talk, Alladi recounts, "Erdõs walked up to him and told him in very polite terms that he was not interested in the father but in the son." Determined to meet with the promising young mathematician, Erdõs, who was bound for Australia, rerouted his trip to stop briefly in Madras, which lies about 850 miles south of Calcutta.

Alladi was astonished that a great mathematician should change his plans to visit a student. He was nervous when he met Erdõs at the airport, but that soon passed. "He talked to me as if he had known me since childhood," Alladi recalls. The first thing Erdõs asked was, "Do you know my poem about Madras?" And then he recited:

This is the city of Madras

The home of the curry and the dhal,

Where Iyers speak only to Iyengars

And Iyengars speak only to God.

The Iyers and Iyengars are two Brahmin sects. The Iyers worship Shiva the Destroyer but will also worship in the temples of the Iyengars, who worship only Lord Vishnu, the Protector. Erdõs explained that this was his variation on the poem about Boston and the pecking order among the Lowells, the Cabots, and God. Having put Alladi at ease, Erdõs launched into a discussion of mathematics. Erdõs was so impressed with Alladi, who was applying to graduate schools in the United States, that he wrote a letter on his behalf. Within a month Alladi received the Chancellor's Fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles.

A celebrated magazine article about Erdõs was called "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers." While it is true that Erdõs loved numbers, he loved much more. He loved to talk about history, politics, and almost any other subject. He loved to take long walks and to climb towers, no matter how dismal the prospective view; he loved to play ping-pong, chess, and Go; he loved to perform silly tricks to amuse children and to make sly jokes and thumb his nose at authority. But most of all, Erdõs loved those who loved numbers, mathematicians. He showed that love by opening his...

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Verlag
Simon & Schuster
Erscheinungsdatum
2000
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0684859807
ISBN 13 
9780684859804
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
236
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande

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