The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth by Paul Hoffman

Mar 10, 2009 Manny rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science, transcendent-experiences

I originally wanted to be a mathematician, and I'm still enough of one that I am completely in awe of Erdös. He was the Saint Francis of Mathematics; he had no possessions, and just wandered around the world doing math research with like-minded people. I see that another reviewer has called him a "hanger-on". Friend, you completely miss the point. He might turn up on someone's doorstep and expect them to feed him and give him a place to sleep for a few nights. He'd often reward them with a coupl...more I originally wanted to be a mathematician, and I'm still enough of one that I am completely in awe of Erdös. He was the Saint Francis of Mathematics; he had no possessions, and just wandered around the world doing math research with like-minded people. I see that another reviewer has called him a "hanger-on". Friend, you completely miss the point. He might turn up on someone's doorstep and expect them to feed him and give him a place to sleep for a few nights. He'd often reward them with a couple of ideas so brilliant that their whole careers would be revitalized, or pushed in some exciting new direction they hadn't even suspected might exist. I'm afraid you don't understand mathematicians' priorities.

As the title says, Erdös loved only numbers, and he wanted to share that love with the whole world. He collaborated with over 500 different people on over 1400 published papers, and every researcher now talks about their "Erdös number". If you published a joint paper with him, your number is 1. If you published a paper with a person who's a 1, you're a 2, and so on. Low numbers are much sought after; if you're wondering, I'm a 5, which is so-so. I keep trying to find a 3 who wants to write a joint paper with me, but so far unsuccessfully.

Like many mathematicians, Erdös had an unusual way of talking, and liked making up his own names for things. He was in particular famous for his habit of calling God "The Supreme Fascist", or "The S.F." for short. I don't think he meant any harm by this: it's just the kind of thing mathematicians think is funny. If there is a God, I'm sure He has some equally insulting pet name for Erdös. The world of mathematics still misses him badly; it would be nice to think that he was up there in the Heavenly Math Institute, publishing joint papers with Pythagoras and Gauss.

This is a fine book about Erdös, sympathetically written by someone who understood well what an amazing, unique person he was. If you're any kind of mathematician, and by some mischance you haven't already come across it, you should put it on your list without further delay!
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Mar 09, 2009 Andy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Paul Erdos, the famously eccentric mathematician, spent twenty hours a day, every day hopped-up on amphetamines, working through mathematical proofs, to the exclusion of any sort of normal social life. He had his own language (to “die” meant to leave the field of mathematics, children were “epsilons”, women “bosses”, God was the “SF” or “Supreme Fascist”). Admittedly asexual, he lived alone with his mother until she died, and then he wandered the U.S. and Europe, staying for a few weeks at a tim...more

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Jun 24, 2008 Mairi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, begged-or-borrowed

I really liked this book a lot. It's the biography of Paul Erdos (pronounced air-dish), a Hungarian mathematician. I read/went over a few sections of it to my really-into-math thirteen-year-old daughter (worst-case scenario analysis, the bin problem, the travelling salesman problem, that 1-1+1-1+1-1... is an infinite series, and a bit about Sophie Germain's correspondence with Gauss) and she was fascinated by it too.

Erdos was an interesting man. So focussed on his passion for numbers that he fo...more

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Feb 02, 2013 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, mathematics

Paul Erdos was a prolific, well-known mathematician. He wrote over 1400 journal articles in various mathematical publications, many of them collaborations. Those people who collaborated with him earned an Erdos "number 1". Those who collaborated with someone who collaborated with him earned a "number 2", and so on.

To say that Erdos was "eccentric" would be an understatement. He had no home--he carried a suitcase with a single change of clothes in it, and traveled the world, visiting one mathemat...more

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Jul 06, 2012 Jenny GB rated it 4 of 5 stars

Wow, what a book! I suppose you could consider this a biography, but it's a lot more than that. You get some glimpses into the life of Paul Erdos. You also get the following: history of Hungary and Europe in general, history of famous mathematicians, history of many famous people Erdos collaborated with, and a healthy dose of number theory mathematics. Let's start with Paul Erdos himself. I was amazed to learn about the life of this man. Yes, he's extremely eccentric. He lived out of two suitcas...more Wow, what a book! I suppose you could consider this a biography, but it's a lot more than that. You get some glimpses into the life of Paul Erdos. You also get the following: history of Hungary and Europe in general, history of famous mathematicians, history of many famous people Erdos collaborated with, and a healthy dose of number theory mathematics. Let's start with Paul Erdos himself. I was amazed to learn about the life of this man. Yes, he's extremely eccentric. He lived out of two suitcases traveling from place to place relying on the kindness of fellow mathematicians. He gave away all his money to needy people or causes. He had his own way of speaking English and had code words for many things. By all accounts he was really difficult as a house guest and very dependent on others. However, he was mathematically brilliant in ways that most mathematicians could only dream of becoming. His specialty was in knowing how to pose problems and knowing who to ask to work solve those problems. I think one of the most remarkable things about him was how he shared his work and stimulated other people. It's not just that he himself was productive, but he was actively involved in supporting a whole lot of other people mathematically AND actively trying to recruit the next generation of mathematicians (he loved children). He's just an incredible man through his kindness, generosity, and true love of mathematics.

The history of countries and individuals was generally interesting and supported the story of Erdos. The author pointed out some of the quirky mathematicians living and dead which added some other interest to the book.

Finally, there was a whole lot of mathematics. This may turn some people off, but I teach math and still remember number theory from my college days. The author really made an effort to make the material clear and easy to understand. Most of it revolves around different theorems involving primes, but near the end he also discusses infinities, the "Let's Make a Deal" problem, and others. I'll admit that I skipped over some of the sections when they got too long or repetitive, and in general it doesn't hurt your appreciation of the book if you do that. However, some of it does make for some interesting reading. My one disappointment was that the author didn't address the applications of large primes. He briefly mentioned that they're used for security, but he had a golden opportunity to talk about encryption which I find a really interesting topic and a beautiful example of pure mathematics being applied in a very useful way. Perhaps he wasn't aware of this or wasn't sufficiently educated in it.

Overall, it was a very satisfying read. I'd recommend this for people that enjoy math, science, or reading about people that are really quite eccentric.(less)

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Jun 11, 2012 Clint rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

Man this book was as fun as a barrel of monkeys. I used to hate math so much when I was a kid, I mean a deep-seated resentment of it, a gutsy full on fucking abhorrence of it. Then I got into physics in college and started liking it, and eventually got As in calculus, but I think I was studying 10 times more than everyone else to get those grades. I'm just not mathematically inclined. Oh well, it's still fun as shit to read about.

Paul Erdos, a dude I'd never heard of, is awesome, a freaky sexua...more

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Mar 27, 2012 Aaron Arnold rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science, read-in-2011

I wish there were more people like Paul Erdös. I was only ever decent at math in high school, and terrible at math after that, so his exploits make me jealous in a good way. I think for many people, and certainly frequently for me, math beyond a certain point is a dense, lightless thicket of symbols. Maybe everyone is born with a certain amount of math facility, and once you learn up to the point where your returns have diminished to uselessness, you have no choice but to forget about it and mov...more I wish there were more people like Paul Erdös. I was only ever decent at math in high school, and terrible at math after that, so his exploits make me jealous in a good way. I think for many people, and certainly frequently for me, math beyond a certain point is a dense, lightless thicket of symbols. Maybe everyone is born with a certain amount of math facility, and once you learn up to the point where your returns have diminished to uselessness, you have no choice but to forget about it and move on to something else. I made it through calculus and still remember some of what I learned, but I wouldn't want to bet anyone's life on me being able to integrate anything more complicated than a sine function very quickly. That's why it's so cool to read an account of a genuine math genius at work - even though I know that this guy who published over 1,500 papers in his lifetime is on another plane entirely when it comes to mathematics, he's so dedicated to the wonders of the subject that it gradually infected me through the pages and I came away wishing I had stuck with my math classes. I often wonder to what extent being good at math is simply an innate quality, a gift that you either have or you don't. One of the things that struck me when I was reading Gödel Escher Bach is that Douglas Hofstader's explanations of complicated mathematical issues were much more comprehensible than that same explanation from a textbook (or even Wikipedia), and a large part of it was due to the fact that he gave a lot of history and narrative behind the various problems instead of just laying out symbols and variables. Humans naturally learn through narratives and stories, and it takes a rare kind of person to be able to strip away all of the scene-setting and background and get straight to the abstract symbol-manipulation. Probably some people are just born with the potential to understand things like Russell's paradox and some aren't, but I would really like to know exactly why that is, what separates the neurology of an Erdös from that of a mere mortal. I like that the book doesn't make Erdös - a fairly weird guy even by the relaxed standards of mathematicians - out to be some kind of freak, which I've frequently seen done to some of the more singular characters in science history like Newton. Instead it's filled with plenty of testimonials about his kindness, his many friendships, and of course his unbelievable gift for probing the relationships between numbers. Explaining higher-level mathematics to a lay audience is one of the toughest tasks a writer can undertake, and Hoffman does a good job of giving the reader a brief tour of some of the many areas of math that Erdös influenced or revolutionized in some way. It's almost comforting to realize that even many professional mathematicians were baffled by what he was doing, and really the way he was able to find patterns in numbers is one of those things that just got more and more impressive with each page. I don't know what kind of mental circuitry lies behind mathematical talent, but I wish I had it, because many of the problems Erdös struggled with are extremely interesting in their own right, if you're curious at all at the mysterious relationships behind the world that we see. There are just so many weird things about prime numbers that you can forgive Erdös' monastic devotion to the subject. I wish I had read this when I was struggling with differential equations, it might have given me some inspiration and fortitude to remember that mathematics is an infinite field. No one can know everything, and that leaves plenty of room for even the most meager contributor to make a mark.(less)

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Mar 03, 2012 Dave Comerford rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's hard to imagine that anyone will ever live a life so disdainful of practicality as Paul Erdos. This book makes the case that Erdos devoted every waking hour of his 80 year life, and many hours where he should have been sleeping too, to the solution of mathematical puzzles. His goal was 'a glimpse at the SF's book'. The SF is the 'supreme fascist', Erdos' term for God. The 'book' contains absolute truths that are and always will be in effect and these are only discernible through mathematics...more It's hard to imagine that anyone will ever live a life so disdainful of practicality as Paul Erdos. This book makes the case that Erdos devoted every waking hour of his 80 year life, and many hours where he should have been sleeping too, to the solution of mathematical puzzles. His goal was 'a glimpse at the SF's book'. The SF is the 'supreme fascist', Erdos' term for God. The 'book' contains absolute truths that are and always will be in effect and these are only discernible through mathematics. As a bi-product of this quest, Erdos became the most prolific mathematician of the 20th century.

Hoffman does a very good job presenting a few of these truths in a way that makes it easy for even this non-motivated novice to recognize that there is a pattern at play that has something of the unfathomable universal about it. His show-don't-tell approach gave me enough slack to feel the awe and also sense the futility of the project.

It helps this book too that Erdos is a compelling character. For most of his adult life he had no home, no job and his only family was his doting mother. His modus operandi was to turn up on the doorstep of a mathematician he wanted to work with and to expect that they would feed and house him and sometimes his mother too. This practice was borne out Erdos' impatience to reveal a tiny bit more of the truth. That earnestness makes him an exciting protagonist, and one who is charming to the reader but presumably less so to his host family - He would clatter pots and pans at 7am to get his host out of bed so they could work on a problem.

Erdos is an interesting counterpoint to Benjamin Franklin. Franklin's creed was that God's will is for us to help our fellow man. Erdos' creed is that the SF has a book of secrets that he is hiding from us and it is our job to find out those secrets. My view of Franklin has undergone a shift by dint of contrast with Erdos. Franklin routinely denied his family members the smallest indulgences. This did not seem a great failing until I read that Erdos was unstintingly generous. He gave away any money that came to him. Erdos' spiky insistence and selfless single mindedness admitted no hypocrisy. Franklin's utilitarian commitments made compromise his modus operandi, which exposes him to charges of hypocrisy, pettiness and manipulativeness.

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Apr 04, 2013 DavidO rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you've ever watched Big Bang Theory (the TV show) there's a character named Sheldon on there who's a theoretical physicist who has some kind of Turet (spelling?)syndrome (or something like it). He is incredibly skilled at Physics, but has no understanding of human relation ships. This book is the biography of a man similar in many ways. This guy wrote some scary number of math papers (200+) while constantly leaching off of other mathematicians, staying at their home and relying on them to mak...more

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Nov 15, 2010 Jane rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was a very intersting read. I wanted to learn more about the psycho-social behavior of Mr. Erdos the genius mathematician. Mr. Erdos was very interesting. He exhibited signs of compulsive obsessive disorder and his behavior was very characteristic of a high level asperger with a genius for math. Paul Erdos lived and breathed math. He frequently spent nineteen hours a day dedicated to math. Mr. Erdos sustained himself on caffeine and ritalin and spent his days engaged in actively discus...more

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Feb 18, 2013 BetseaK rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biographies, maths

I enjoyed this book a lot. Within a humanized story of the colourful life of Hungarian maths genius Paul Erdős and the people associated with him in various ways, this book gives a fascinating insight into the world of pure mathematics, its historical background and the lives and psychology of many famous mathematicians.
I was particularly interested in the real-life applications of the maths concept as well as the psychological aspect. I found it surprising that, despite their talent for findin...more

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Apr 29, 2013 Kasyap rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mathematics, history-biography

This is a well written biography of paul erdos, a prolific hungarian mathematician who spends over 19 hours a day doing mathematics and has published over 1400 papers. He was a man who had no home and had travelled around the world giving lectures and staying at his friends place's.
To anyone who is interested in mathematics, this book is great and very fun to read.

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Oct 01, 2011 Asma rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science

i liked the book when it describes Paul Erdos life. But i kind of disliked the fact that there were so many jumps for instance there were in so many places in the book when the author talks about erdo then suddenly, there is a description of other people's lives and some pints in mathematics.
Erdos was an obsessed mathematician. he spent 19 hours a day doing math. He even had his own langauge for example he calls kids epsilon and lecturing preaching, god is the SF which stans for the supreme fasc...more

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Mar 11, 2009 Brian Sison rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography-memoir, math, non-fiction

This book is 2/3 the story of Paul Erdos, and 1/3 the history of mathematics and number theory. Often, the book runs on a tangent from Erdos into the lives of other famous or infamous mathematicians... Archimedes, Gauss, Euler, Fermat, Godel, and many others populate the story of The Man Who Loved Only Numbers.

But Erdos is truly a remarkable man in and of himself. Speaking a language all his own (men=slaves, women=bosses, children=epsilons, etc), he is a most eccentric person. Studying and work...more

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Feb 05, 2012 Marsha rated it 5 of 5 stars

Paul Erdős (pronounced “air-dish”) was born in Hungary in March 26, 1913. He died at the age of eighty-three on September 20, 1996. Erdős had to leave Hungary when he was a young man because he was Jewish and if he did not leave, he probably would have been persecuted by the Nazis. As a mathematician, he wrote or co-authored 1,475 academic papers. He was close to his mother her entire life. He never had a romantic relationship. He was not homosexual. His only love was numbers.

Erdős loved math. H...more Paul Erdős (pronounced “air-dish”) was born in Hungary in March 26, 1913. He died at the age of eighty-three on September 20, 1996. Erdős had to leave Hungary when he was a young man because he was Jewish and if he did not leave, he probably would have been persecuted by the Nazis. As a mathematician, he wrote or co-authored 1,475 academic papers. He was close to his mother her entire life. He never had a romantic relationship. He was not homosexual. His only love was numbers.

Erdős loved math. He talked about it, dreamt about it, and tried to solve it. He developed his own language for describing others. Children, whom he enjoyed, he called “epsilons” after the Greek letter epsilon which is used to represent small qualities. He called God “SF” or “Supreme Fascist” cursing the SF for tormenting Erdős “by hiding his glasses, stealing his Hungarian passport, or, worse yet, keeping to Himself the elegant solutions to all sorts of intriguing mathematical problems.” (pg 4, Hyperion paperback 1998 edition).

Erdős was a bit of a wandering Jew, traveling around the world seeking new problems to solve, meeting mathematicians, promising students, and giving lectures. He did not have a home. His belongings were carried with him in a suitcase and large plastic bag. He had few clothes. He visited and stayed with mathematicians for days at a time, never really overstaying his welcome, except as to wear out his hosts with his constant verbal flow of mathematical discussions and problem solving. He slept only an average of three hours a night, often awakening his guests to discuss math with him. He took short naps during the day, but even in between naps he would continue his discussions, exhausting others. However, he was such a character that an experience with Erdős was also quite challenging and rewarding.

Like many geniuses, Erdős had trouble with some of the simplest things and was eccentric. For instance, he did have a fear of germs, constantly washing his hands. He was very generous with money and did not like to have many possessions. He once gave $1,000 to a promising math student who was short this amount for his college tuition. Years later when the student offered to pay Erdős back, Erdős told him to use the money to help another promising student.

Erdős sounded like a man I would have loved to have met or at least heard speak at one of his lectures. With his strong Hungarian accent and math stories, I’m sure it would have been memorable.

Hoffman’s book also discusses other mathematicians, some of which had encounters with Erdős at some stage of their life. Reading about other mathematicians was also interesting. For instance, Hoffman wrote about Marilyn vos Savants who wrote a column in "Parade" magazine called “Ask Marilyn.” According to the Guinness Book of World Records, her IQ was an astounding 228. She was married to Robert Jarvik, who invented the Jarvik artificial heart. She made a good living writing her columns, books and also participating in speaking engagements.

The author wrote that most mathematicians are a little crazy. Some mathematicians have committed suicide due to depression. John Nash, a mathematician at Princeton who won a Nobel Prize for economics in 1994, developed schizophrenia. The Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski had a Ph.D in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1962.

Hoffman also discusses many mathematical problems. Thus, I enjoyed this book a lot and learned quite a bit from it as well.
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Mar 16, 2011 Brian rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nerd-stuff

Entertaining in parts, but transparently a journalist's article expanded into a book

I feel like I've been bitten so many times by journalists who write interesting pieces, so interesting that someone tells them to write a book about the subject. But they don't actually add anything of value to what was an appropriate length work. So it is with this case. The stuff actually about Erdös I found quite entertaining (if caricature-ish as suggested by the Amazon reveiew titled "The man who truly loved...more

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Jun 21, 2011 Ensiform rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: math, non-fiction

A biography of the famous mathematician Paul Erdos, the most prolific publisher of mathematical papers in the world. He spent his life travelling, living out of a single suitcase, staying at other mathematicians’ houses for a bit, collaborating on papers with them in blitzkrieg weeks of nineteen-hour days of work, then moving on, leaving his collaborators dazed and exhausted but proud. Famed for his work in probability, graph theory, and combinatorics, he is also remembered in math circles for h...more A biography of the famous mathematician Paul Erdos, the most prolific publisher of mathematical papers in the world. He spent his life travelling, living out of a single suitcase, staying at other mathematicians’ houses for a bit, collaborating on papers with them in blitzkrieg weeks of nineteen-hour days of work, then moving on, leaving his collaborators dazed and exhausted but proud. Famed for his work in probability, graph theory, and combinatorics, he is also remembered in math circles for his eccentric personality, most marked in his lack of practical and social skills and dependence on his various hosts. He is also remembered by the term “Erdos number,” which denotes how close a mathematician was to publishing a paper with the prolific Great One: an Erdos number of one means you have published with him as co-author; two means you have published with someone who was a co-author, and so on.

Full of amusing anecdotes and math jokes, the book is actually less a profile of Erdos than sort of “history of the eccentric or at least interesting in mathematics,” as Hoffman digresses at length into militant atheist and pure mathematician G.H. Hardy; his protégé, the prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan; the conflict between Frege and Russell and the latter’s paradoxes in set theory; Fermat and the legion of mathematicians who tried to prove his Last Theorem; modern practitioner Ronald Graham and his work in finding the efficiency of worst-case scenarios in combinatorics for his employer AT&T; the strangeness of Euler’s identity; Georg Cantor and his hunt for the transinfinite (known today in Hilbert’s Grand Hotel problem); Marilyn vos Savant and her controversial solution to a problem on probability; and so on. Some of this has nothing whatever to do with Erdos; some is tangentially related (he read vos Savant’s answer and didn’t understand why it should be so). In any case, it’s a fascinating look into the world of pure mathematics and how work in the most remote corners of pure math, which can seem so rarefied, can have vast practical applications years or even centuries later (as in the study of prime numbers, which helps in military cryptography). The book gets back to Erdos’ personal life just in time to chronicle his death and the outpouring of tributes that came from the math world. It’s not a bad book at all, but it’s not a biography of Erdos, either. Rather, it’s a collection of interesting problems that popped up in the history of modern mathematics. Why Hoffman, who does an admirable job making some of the most baffling math concepts almost accessible to the layman, hung this (interesting, certainly) patchwork quilt on the bare-bones frame of a biographical sketch of Erdos, a mathematician he knew personally, is not very clear. Is it that there simply wasn’t much to say about the Great One beyond that he literally lived for mathematics? That Hoffman thought a book called “Eccentric Mathematicians of History and Their Puzzling Problems” wouldn’t sell? Well, maybe it wouldn’t. (less)

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Sep 04, 2009 Terry rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: biographies

The book barely has a narrative and is much closer to a collection of comic strips than a biography. The book is largely carried by how intensely interesting Paul Erdos was. Stories essentially repeat and themes pop up at odd times with usually predictable conclusions and the balance between simply stating a mathematical idea and explaining it is seemingly random.

A good center section of the book is dedicated to talk about the fear of Russell of being useless, this doesn't relate to Paul Erdos w...more

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Apr 15, 2011 John rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

I'm fascinated by numbers. Completely clueless when it comes to anything other than basic arithmetic but still fascinated by numbers. In this book Paul Hoffman lets us have a glimpse into the rarefied world in which Paul Erdos lived. That the story of a man who, to all intents and purposes, did nothing for 80 years but think about complex problems could be the subject of a book that is at once fascinating, page turningly compelling, amusing and thought provoking is a tribute to Mr Hoffman's skil...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Martina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: math-and-natural-sciences, nonfiction

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is an interesting read from multiple aspects. It mostly concentrates on the life story of Paul Erdös, an incredible genius who took on an occupation of traveling mathematician, all for one goal: getting more knowledge from the Book. (It was Erdös' opinion that the Supreme Fascist up there had a Book filled with elegant mathematical equations, but people weren't allowed to read it. Instead, people could only catch glimpses of the Book's pages, by means of flashes o...more The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is an interesting read from multiple aspects. It mostly concentrates on the life story of Paul Erdös, an incredible genius who took on an occupation of traveling mathematician, all for one goal: getting more knowledge from the Book. (It was Erdös' opinion that the Supreme Fascist up there had a Book filled with elegant mathematical equations, but people weren't allowed to read it. Instead, people could only catch glimpses of the Book's pages, by means of flashes of inspirations mathematicians may have.) The book is basically an expose of the quirks of a man who led a life of a nomad, working a 19 hours a day and collaborating with numerous other people to produce a staggering number of publications. A man who was concentrated on lowering the SF's score by doing kind things, like giving money to charity, finding child prodigies and visiting the mothers and widows of deceased colleagues.

But it doesn't stop on the life and, perhaps less so, work of the prolific mathematician. We're also granted insight into the lives of mathematicians Erdös worked with (like G.H. Hardy, Ron Graham and Stan Ulem) or held in high regard (like Ramanujan), as well as tidbits about famous mathematicians from the past (Gauss, Fermat, Fibonacci, Sophie Germain...). Even though the author didn't focus on mathematical problems - usually he would describe a problem significant for the mathematician mentioned - that didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book.

Last but not least, the book also deals with the times in which Erdös lived. As an expatriate stemming from a country with troubled history, he was affected in different ways by the political workings of the centers of power. I'm referring to the fact that Paul Erdös was born into a Jewish family in a time Jews weren't very popular (and their popularity dwindled down even further during WWII). His father spent a long time in a gulag far aways from home, thanks to the democratic regime in Hungary after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and his family was severely decimated in WWII. After the rise of communism in Hungary, Erdös was regarded with suspicion in the USA (also known as Sam in Erdösese :P), and had trouble traveling freely between countries as was his habit.

My final verdict: The book probably won't be appealing to trivial beings, but curious bosses and slaves (and epsilons, for that matter) who would like to learn more about the Book, what Erdös numbers signify, what it means to preach, what it means to die, and what it means to leave will find The Man Who Loved Only Numbers interesting.(less)

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Dec 20, 2011 Laura rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: paper, divulgacio, 2011

Vaig trobar-lo al museu de la ciència i em va semblar que podia estar molt bé. Així que a la mínima que vaig poder, em vaig posar a llegir-lo...

El primer capítol va ser genial. Explicava una mica la vida d'en Paul Erdos, i per això volia jo el llibre, no? El que passa és que, un cop llegit el primer capítol (no eren massa pàgines) em vaig preguntar: "I ara què explicarà?"

Doncs no massa.

La resta de llibre sembla una mica com per omplir. Amb un sol capítol no es fa un llibre. Així que l'autor...more

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Jun 04, 2009 Matthew rated it 5 of 5 stars

Charming biography of mathematician Paul Erdos. Charming, I would think to anyone who at least appreciates mathematics or mathematical research. The mathematician lived an eccentric, nomadic life, collaborating with numerous mathematicians, randomly supporting graduate students to finish their degrees without any noticeable concern of being reimbursed. He had no interest in common pleasures, conversation, relationships, in anything except mathematics. He did love children though, referring to th...more

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Jun 30, 2010 Lance rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. It's nominally a biography of Erdos (and it covers a lot of his life), but it really uses his life as a jumping-off point to discuss areas of mathematics and number theory.

I think the explanations of math should be understandable for most audiences (except for the foray at the end into different infinities; I could see people getting lost in that), and it was fun reading about the history of ideas that we now take for granted (The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved: How ...more

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Oct 05, 2011 Noemie Vassilakis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Reading this book ten years ago changed how I physically perceive. Sound and visual input brightened for me, became more vivid. I gained a new appreciation of the profound order and interconnectedness of all phenomena.

I understand from other reviews that there isn't much in this book that's new to mathematicians or to people who are widely read in math. But I was hungry for this information and I drank it in and it's like it nourished me in just the way I needed at the time.

I do take issue with...more

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Aug 12, 2010 Tessa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: half-read

I would have loved this book if it were condensed into a New Yorker article. But since I am anumerate (I just made that up--bereft of math skills, I mean), the long digressions into prime number theory left me feeling inadequate and panicky. And, since we learn at the beginning about Erdos's personality and when he died, I wasn't compelled to read by a possible change of character or anything. Not that I wanted him to change, it was just clear that he was always a singular person and remained so...more

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Nov 15, 2012 Aaronleclair rated it 2 of 5 stars

After a compelling first chapter that attempts to shed a highly observational eye on the quirks that make mathematicians "tick", Hoffman follows with a fairly lackluster exposition of relatively standard pop-math topics, many of which don't really have much of a connection to Erdos. I suppose Hoffman realized that writing about math to a non-technical audience is indeed daunting -- and from what I remember of my math degree, Erdos' work isn't necessarily the most accessible without some exposure...more

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Jan 10, 2012 Adam Boudreau rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mathematics

I very much wanted to give this five stars, but I feel like the story strayed away from Paul Erdős after a while. The book also seems to be slightly scattered at times as well, as if there were so many stories about Erdős that Hoffman just didn’t really know where to begin. So the book sort of jumps around through Erdős life story. After you get used to this way of telling the story it becomes a bit easier to read and is still very enjoyable.

The real reason this lost a star is that this book goe...more I very much wanted to give this five stars, but I feel like the story strayed away from Paul Erdős after a while. The book also seems to be slightly scattered at times as well, as if there were so many stories about Erdős that Hoffman just didn’t really know where to begin. So the book sort of jumps around through Erdős life story. After you get used to this way of telling the story it becomes a bit easier to read and is still very enjoyable.

The real reason this lost a star is that this book goes on long drawn out tangents that seemingly don’t have much to do with Erdős. If I remember correctly chapter 4 deviated quite a bit with stories of other mathematicians. I understand that math is just rife with amazing and interesting biographies, but I feel too much was put into this book. He tells stories of Fermat, Wiles, Gauss, and all kinds of other people. I realize these people are fascinating, but he did not tie them with Erdős very well in my opinion other than the fact that these people did interesting math, some of which Erdős was interested in as well.

Interviewing Erdős’ friends like Graham makes sense in the context of the story and those tangents were perfectly fine, but what was a bit out there were the mathematical tangents. Hoffman is not a mathematician, so I can understand to some degree as to why he would go on these tangents when he discovered all kinds of curiosities. It’s one of the more endearing aspects of mathematics, once you delve into that world you do want to get a little taste of it. I am not saying that what Hoffman wrote was wrong, I am merely saying that it didn’t seem to have very much to do with the Erdős story. Once in a while Hoffman would maybe realize this and in the midst of a mathematical explanation quote some tidbit Erdős said about the mathematics being discussed. These mathematical excursions mainly happen in chapters 5 and I think they make the story harder for the lay person to grasp. So if you are not well in tune with mathematics or only care about the Erdős story you can easily skip these chapters to some degree.

At that juncture I was getting a bit worried about the book and wondered if it would get back to Erdős. Chapter 7 gives a great in memoriam tale after Erdős’ death and this was a wonderful read. So, in the end the book ended on a high note. Overall this was a fascinating story and I could hardly put the book down. Erdős was an impressive mathematical mind and the world is lessened now that he is no longer here. For those curious about his life and eccentricities, then I would recommend this book.
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Nov 21, 2011 Abigailann (Abigail) rated it 2 of 5 stars

Whilst there were parts of this book which I enjoyed immensely, humourous and/or interesting as they were, the mathematical parts generally caused me much confusion. I guess I should have expected this in a book about 'the search for mathematical truth', but I felt that there was much more of this aspect than the bit about Paul Erdos' life. Why did he love maths so much? What about his relationships with other people? How did non-mathematicians react to him? These questions were only briefly to...more

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Mar 26, 2012 Samuel Lubell rated it 2 of 5 stars

Recommended to Samuel by: Mensa book club

Shelves: nonfiction

This is the story of Paul Erdos, a mathematical genius who had almost no interest in anything other than math. He comes across as very strange and in some ways unlikeable. He didn’t have a home and depended on others to take him in for a few months while he came in and did math. But he also set up problems for others and collaborated to an unusual extent (the book mentions Erdos numbers, a form of six degrees of separation with a 1 for those who collaborated with Erdos, 2 for those who collabora...more

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May 14, 2013 Ray Schierloh rated it 5 of 5 stars

As a math major in college I was introduced to more proofs and theories than I could count. (And I was a math major so I was pretty good at counting) Despite this I spent a surprisingly low amount of time thinking about the people that discovered them.
I want to say right away that I think a majority of this book would be appreciated by anyone even haters of math. This book is primarily about the incredible being that is Paul Erdos. I can't tell if it was inspiring or if it made me glad I didn...more

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The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth

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