![]() He travelled until his death at 83, racing across four continents to prove as many theorems as possible, fuelled by a diet of espresso and amphetamines. ![]() Instead he travelled the world with his mother in tow, arriving at the doorstep of esteemed mathematicians declaring ‘My brain is open’. For six decades Erdos had no job, no hobbies, no wife, no home he never learnt to cook, do laundry, drive a car and died a virgin. It was the start of a life consumed by mathematics. At four he began looking for patterns amongst the prime integers. At three he could multiply three digit numbers in his head. ![]() His mother, fearing childhood contagion, refused her son conventional schooling. Born in 1913 in Budapest, Erdos was born the very day his two sisters died of scarlet fever. ![]() In The Man Who Loved Only Numbers Paul Hoffman, former Editor-in-Chief of Discover magazine, describes the life of Paul Erdos, Hungarian mathematical genius. Paul Erdos was the most prolific pure mathematician in history and, arguably, the strangest too. ![]()
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