The Man Who Loved Only Numbers - The Story of Paul Erdoes and the Search for Mathematical Truth (Paperback, Reissue)

It had to happen. After the success of Fermat's Last Theorem, another mathematical biography - but one completely different from the Fermat books, describing the life and work (mainly work, as you will see) of the 20th-century mathematician Paul Erdoes, who had 'no hobbies, no wife, no home; he never learned to cook, do laundry, drive a car and died a virgin'. Weird, maybe; but also an undoubted genius whose story is used by author Hoffman (who knew Erdoes personally) as a peg on which to hang tales of many other mathematicians, from Archimedes to Stanislaw Ulam, the father of the hydrogen bomb. Winner of the 1999 Rhone-Poulenc Prize for Science. (Kirkus UK)

Paul Erdös, the most prolific and eccentric mathematician of our times, forsook all creature comforts – including a home – to pursue his lifelong study of numbers. He was a man who possessed unimaginable powers of thought, yet was unable to manage some of the simplest daily tasks.

For more than six decades Erdös lived out of two tattered suitcases, criss-crossing four continents at a frenzied pace, chasing mathematical problems. He gave his love to numbers – and they returned in kind, 'revealing their secrets to him as they did to no other mathematician of this century' (Life magazine). Erdös saw mathematics as a search for lasting beauty and ultimate truth. It was a search he never abandoned, even as his life was torn asunder by some of the major political dramas of our time: the Communist revolution in his native Hungary, the rise of Nazism, the Cold War and McCarthyism.

In this brilliantly inventive and playful biography, Hoffman uses Erdös's life and work to introduce readers to a cast of remarkable geniuses, from Archimedes to Stanislaw Ulam, one of the chief minds behind the Los Alamos nuclear project. He draws on years of interviews with Ronald Graham and Fan Chung, Erdos's chief American caretakers and devoted collaborators. With an eye for the hilarious anecdote, Hoffman explains mathematical problems from Fermat's Last Theorem to the more frivolous 'Monty Hall Problem'. What emerges is an intimate look at the world of mathematics and an indelible portrait of Erdös, a charming and impish philosopher-scientist whose accomplishments continue to enrich and inform our world.

General

Imprint:	4th Estate
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	June 1999
Authors:	Paul Hoffman
Dimensions:	197 x 130 x 20mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - B-format
Pages:	301
Edition:	Reissue
ISBN-13:	978-1-85702-829-4
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > Science, technology & engineering Books > Science & Mathematics > Mathematics > History of mathematics Books > Biography > Science, technology & engineering
LSN:	1-85702-829-5
Barcode:	9781857028294

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