Paul Erdős: The Wandering Mathematician Who Turned Coffee into Theorems

Описание: In this episode of pplpod, we calculate the life of Paul Erdős, the prolific Hungarian mathematician famously dubbed "The Oddball's Oddball" by Time magazine. A child prodigy who could calculate how many seconds a person had lived by age five, Erdős grew up to become one of the most productive mathematicians in history, publishing roughly 1,500 papers during his lifetime.
We explore his eccentric, itinerant lifestyle: Erdős never married, held no permanent address, and lived out of a suitcase, traveling between universities and colleagues' homes to announce, "my brain is open". We discuss his firm belief that mathematics was a social activity, which led to collaborations with over 500 people and the creation of the famous "Erdős number" to measure the distance between him and other scholars.
Tune in to hear about his unique vocabulary—where God was the "Supreme Fascist" guarding "The Book" of perfect proofs, and children were "epsilons"—as well as his reliance on amphetamines and coffee to fuel his work. From offering cash prizes for unsolved problems to his death while attending a conference in Warsaw, discover the legacy of a man whose only goal was to prove the next theorem.