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"Paul Erdos, the most prolific and eccentric mathematician of our time, forsook all creature comforts - including a hometo 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, Erdos lived out of two tattered suitcases, crisscrossing four continents at a frenzied pace, chasing mathematical problems and fresh talent. Erdos saw mathematics as a search for lasting beauty and ultimate truth. It was a search Erdos never abandoned, even as his life was torn asunder by some of the major political dramas of our time." "In this biography, Hoffman uses Erdos'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 dilemma." What emerges is an intimate look at the world of mathematics and an indelible portrait of Erdos, a charming and impish philosopher-scientist whose accomplishments continue to enrich and inform our world."--Jacket.… (mere)
Indeholder "0. The two-and-a-half-billion-year-old-man", "1. Straight from the book", "2. Epszi's enigma", "e. Problems with Sam and Joe", "3. Einstein vs. Dostoyevsky", "pi, Dr. Worst Case", "4. Marginal Revenge", "5. God made the integers", "6. Getting the goat", "7. Survivors' party", "oo. We mathematicians are all a little bit crazy", "Acknowledgments and source notes", "Bibliography", "Index". Udmærket beskrivelse af en meget mærkelig mand. En ikke religiøs mand, der alligevel snakker om BOGEN, hvor alle de rigtige og smukke og gode beviser står i. Erdös levede om ikke i en kuffert, så dog ud af en kuffert og rejste jorden rundt for at lave interessant matematik i samarbejde med de bedste matematikere. Hvis han havde penge, brugte han nogle af dem på at udsætte dusører for løsning af opgaver, han selv fandt interessante. Bogen er fyldt med småhistorier om ham og nogle enkelte interessante stykker matematik. Glimrende og læsværdig biografi, hvis man holder af matematik ( )
Oplysninger fra den engelske Almen VidenRedigér teksten, så den bliver dansk.
Mathematical truth is immutable; it lies outside physical reality. . . . This is our belief; this is our core motivating force. Yet our attempts to describe this belief to our nonmathematical friends are akin to describing the Almighty to an atheist. Paul embodied this belief in mathematical truth. His enormous talents and energies were given entirely to the Temple of Mathematics. He harbored no doubts about the importance, the absoluteness, of his quest. To see his faith was to be given faith. The religious world might better have understood Paul's special personal qualities. We knew him as Uncle Paul. ―Joel Spencer
To find another life this century as intensely devoted to abstraction, one must reach back to Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), who stripped his life bare for philosophy. But whereas Wittgenstein discarded his family fortune as a form of self-torture, Mr. Erdős gave away most of the money he earned because he simply did not need it. . . . And where Wittgenstin was driven by near suicidal compulsions, Mr. Erdős simply constructed his life to extract the maximum amount of happiness. ―The Economist
Tilegnelse
Oplysninger fra den engelske Almen VidenRedigér teksten, så den bliver dansk.
To Pali bácsi, der Zauberer von Budapest, who got by with a little help from his friends and achieved immortality with his proofs and conjectures
To Ron, who made the last 39.76 percent of Paul's life easier and gave generously of his time in helping me understand Paul's world
To Ann, who loves frogs, poetry, and me
Første ord
Oplysninger fra den engelske Almen VidenRedigér teksten, så den bliver dansk.
It was dinnertime in Greenbrook, New Jersey, on a cold spring day in 1987, and Paul Erdős, then seventy-four, had lost four mathematical colleagues, who were sitting fifty feet in front of him, sipping green tea.
Citater
Sidste ord
Oplysninger fra den engelske Almen VidenRedigér teksten, så den bliver dansk.
That was Erdős, always thinking about the epsilons.
"Paul Erdos, the most prolific and eccentric mathematician of our time, forsook all creature comforts - including a hometo 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, Erdos lived out of two tattered suitcases, crisscrossing four continents at a frenzied pace, chasing mathematical problems and fresh talent. Erdos saw mathematics as a search for lasting beauty and ultimate truth. It was a search Erdos never abandoned, even as his life was torn asunder by some of the major political dramas of our time." "In this biography, Hoffman uses Erdos'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 dilemma." What emerges is an intimate look at the world of mathematics and an indelible portrait of Erdos, a charming and impish philosopher-scientist whose accomplishments continue to enrich and inform our world."--Jacket.
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Udmærket beskrivelse af en meget mærkelig mand. En ikke religiøs mand, der alligevel snakker om BOGEN, hvor alle de rigtige og smukke og gode beviser står i. Erdös levede om ikke i en kuffert, så dog ud af en kuffert og rejste jorden rundt for at lave interessant matematik i samarbejde med de bedste matematikere. Hvis han havde penge, brugte han nogle af dem på at udsætte dusører for løsning af opgaver, han selv fandt interessante. Bogen er fyldt med småhistorier om ham og nogle enkelte interessante stykker matematik.
Glimrende og læsværdig biografi, hvis man holder af matematik (