Rating: 
Summary: A biography that mostly isn't one
Review: Being something of a 'lapsed' mathematician (long ago math major, long unused), I'm always interested in books that involve numbers and people who love numbers. I'm usually not fond of biographies, but I'd heard good things about this one and decided to give it a try. To my surprise and joy, it turned out to be more about numbers and math in general, than about those irritating details of a person's life that usually get in the way of a good read. I agree with one of the earlier reviews here that trying to write an entire book devoted just to Paul Erdos would probably have been futile -- his entire life was numbers. This book opens doors for people who aren't familiar with the various theories and offers some 'math surprises' for those of us who were familiar with math in a former life. I'm still puzzling over the tiling result. (Sorry, you'll have to read the book to find out what it was.) Loved it. Highly recommend it. Have so far purchased two copies as gifts and will likely purchase at least two more (I have a lot of math-oriented friends).
Rating: 
Summary: How a good biography should be
Review: This is one of two excellent biographies published shortly after Paul Erdos' death (the other being "my brain is open" by B.Schechter) This book succeeds on many levels. It is a well written biography about an ideal subject. Erdos traveled in time through the most important events of century, and in space through the countries of four continent. Intellectually, he influenced many areas of pure mathematics: mostly discrete (number theory, combinatorics, Ramsey theory, random graphs) math, but with important excursions in analysis and probability as well. On top of that, he had a truly unique personality and research style. The book is rich in very humorous anecdotes, from which Erdos emerges as a generous, unselfish man with an obsession for beautiful mathematics. However, Hoffman is more interested in depicting the mathematical community at large, and rightly so: this is a relatively small group of people who are usually regarded as eccentic and obscure. After reading the life of Erdos and company most readers will change their opinion, for the better. Finally, this book succeed in giving a flavor of number theory and combinatorics; in this respect it resembles the masterpiece "What is Mathematics?" by Courant and Robbins.It would a fitting tribute to Erdos that some high school students will choose a math major after being inspired by his life.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Good Book About A Charming, Eccentric Genius
Review: Paul Hoffman, publisher of Encyclopedia Brittanica, has written a lively biography of Paul Erdos, a brilliant number theorist who spent his long and productive career with no permanent residence. Although Erdos had many oddities, such as the inability to handle some of the most mundane tasks such as taking a shower without pointing the nozzle in the wrong direction and getting water all over the floor, he was a very charming and lovable man, unlike, for example, John Nash throughout much of the latter's life. I think that a more accurate title would have been The Man Who Understood Only Numbers. Certainly he loved children and had no apparent malice towards anyone. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in people of unusual intelligence. This is not a math book. No knowledge of mathematics whatsoever is necessary for the enjoyment of this book and the appreciation of its subject.
Rating:
Summary: An odd book, but a wonderful one
Review: This book is tremendous fun to read. It's not very well organized, it jumps around a lot, it gets lost in tangents - but it manages to capture that pure, fresh, clear and utterly exciting atmosphere of mathematical creativity to which Paul Erdos devoted his life. His genius lay in number theory, which is a part of mathematics that's peculiarly open to child prodigies. Erdos was a true child prodidy, and essentially retained his childlike openness and enthusiasm to the end of his long life. The book does a marvellous job in giving us a beautifully integrated picture of Erdos, showing him embedded in his very special world of math, talking about math, cooperating, publishing together, living in other mathematicians' houses and driving them crazy with his ridiculous antics. For Erdos, math was an almost entirely social activity, depending on constant exchange and unceasing discussion. The book describes one of the most peculiar minds and lives I have ever encountered. It's perhaps because Erdos was so genuinely odd that the book's unconventional approach works so well. Avoiding all sentimentality or glorification of its subject, this is a deeply moving biography of a beautiful mind.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Light Read
Review: This book focuses on the life of the remarkable Paul Erdos, probably the most prolific mathematician of this century. Erdos is notable not only for his work but also for his obsessive life style. For most of his life, he had no job, no home, and following the death of his beloved mother, no family. He migrated from city to city, shepharded through life by a series of collaborators. This book is not really a biography of Erdos or in anyway a serious study of Erdos' accomplishments in mathematics. No one who finishes this book will have a detailed knowledge of his life or a grasp of his work. In addition to anecdotes about Erdos, this book contains anecdotes about other mathematicians, some already well known, and some basic discussions of math topics, mainly number theory. The stories about Erdos, however, are charming, and this book is written well. In some ways it resembles an extended New Yorker profile of an interesting personality and I mean that as a compliment. This book is also an enjoyable tribute to a community of people who took it upon themselves to safeguard a remarkable, albeit sometimes difficult, resource. Still, this is not the book for anyone with a serious interest in intellectual history or mathematics.
Rating:
Summary: A True Genius Walked amongst us..
Review: I did not intend to suggest I knew Erdos,I was just thinking that every once in a while a genius does appear and walks amongst we less gifted mortals.Although I've studied a lot of mathematics;but when one reads about Erdos,one feels like a baseball fan,who has not even played minor league ball,getting to see how a Major Leaguer ,and one of the best at that,thinks.
If you would like to read about a man whose life in Mathematics was similar to Woody Guthrie's in music you will find this an excellent read.To enjoy this book you no more need to know mathematics any more than you need to read or compose music to enjoy reading about the life of Guthrie.
Erdos,who put in 19-hour days proving and conjecturing,denied that he fell asleep during mathematics conferences."I wasn't sleeping",he would say."I was thinking."
The book also tells us about Erdos's great friend,Ron Graham.They were referred to as the odd couple of mathematics; but so different from one another.Erdos never had a job that lasted more than an acedemic year;Graham would stay at Bell Labs his whole career,eventually becoming Chief Scientist.Graham had a complete family life ;Erdos had no family.Erdos became addicted to amphetamines.Graham bet him he couldn't quit.Erdos won and kept off drugs for a month and said "But I didn't get any work done.I'd get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper.I'd have no ideas,just like an ordinary person.You set mathematics back a month".
Rating:
Summary: Eminently Fascinating
Review: Having stopped learning math in high school, competent, but not excellent at it, this book was a great romp of mathematical trivia. As a biography it is a little scattered in focus, but the life of Paul Erdos was befitting of such an approach. One of the great minds in the history of math, more published than almost any other, thinking things only a handful of others could grasp, Erdos was a personification of the absent-minded thinker. Which could sometimes make for a hard subject to write the life of. Having never heard of Erdos until I read this book, it proved to be a competent and entertaining book about the man's life and quirks and some of his ideas. But the true strength of this book is its branching out into the ideas of the world of mathematics. Taking asides that last ten pages or more, Paul Hoffman explores the foundations and revolutions and some of the quirkier trivia tidbits of the world of mathematics. Making this work as much a fun romp through the interesting parts of math and part biography of a quixotic man who lived math. I have heard there is another biography of Erdos out there that deals more directly with his life and ideas, and if one were looking for a more focused biography, it would probably be a better choice. But The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is a great read for its insight and entertainment value. Yes, it made math fun, and for the most part understandable.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining, but lacks crucial information
Review: Paul Erdos' position in number theory of the 20th century is pretty much like Miles Davis' in jazz: in some way or another every important figure in number theory has worked with Erdos, much like every influential jazz musician collaborated with Davis at one point in their respective careers. This may explain the number theorists' obsession with calculating their "Erdos number" (a person is said to have Erdos number one if the person wrote a mathematical paper with Erdos; a person with Erdos number 2 is a person who wrote a paper with a person with Erdos number 1, and so on and so forth. For more information on Erdos number visit oakland.edu/~grossman/erdoshp.html). Erdos was a prolific mathematician. According to the statistics compiled in the site just mentioned, he was the one who authored the most papers in the entire history of mathematics, even surpassing Euler. The book is a collection of anecdotes related to Erdos. I say "anecdotes" because the book does not follow the usual birth-till-death timeline approach for biographies. Each chapter roughly corresponds to a story surrounding important collaborators of Erdos for a certain type of mathematical problem, not necessarily ordered chronologically. Erdos appears in these anecdotes as a person who cared dearly for his mother (he did not have his own family, not to mentioned he that he died a virgin according to his own words), mathematicians of all sorts regardless of their nationalities, children; as a person who despised anything that confined anyone's freedom, including God, or to put it in his words, SF, the "Supreme Fascist"; as a person who did not even have the ability to operate the most basic things, like operating air conditioners or even slicing a grapefruit with the right side of a knife (according to this book Erdos confessed that the first time he applied butter to bread was when he was in his 20s -- before Erdos' mother took care of him, and henceforth his friends/collaborators did); as a person whose earthly interest was zero (he never had a house -- he lived off at friends/collaborators), who gave everything he earned to any charity organization and every person in need (his entire possession fit into two suitcases); as a person whose love towards mathematics none equaled (he traveled incessantly to give lectures and worked 18 hours daily till he died); as a person who nevertheless feared death. The book's format may have been just right for describing Erdos, whose life perhaps had no other way of being described of other than through mathematical problems. However for 1) the lack of information re. Erdos' "real" accomplishments (omitted most likely for general accessibility), 2) the author's occasional deviation from Erdos (for e.g. an entire chapter devoted to Fermat's last theorem which almost has nothing to do with Erdos; retelling of the most "popular" paradoxes of mathematics) which I felt catering to commercialism, I do not feel that the book depicted Erdos' life the best. The book is at best an entertaining read of one of the most interesting and influential mathematicians of the past century.
Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Book
Review: Thirty years ago I might have called Joyce's Ulysses my favorite book. Now I prefer things that are easier to get through yet somehow touch the stars, and this book portrays a sweet and gracious gentleman who loves children and mathematics and spends his life traveling from one mathematician's house to another with his two suitcases, exhausting his host with number theory for a week before moving on. Childlike himself, unable to cook an egg or read a timetable, Erdos's story appealed to me both for the math and, frankly, for his successful obsessiveness. He is second only to Einstein in terms of stature among 20th century mathematicians, and Hoffman's treatment of him is first-rate. (FYI I am also a fan of Simon Singh in the general-interest math genre.)
Rating:
Summary: Incredible book
Review: I picked up this book to learn about one of the prolific mathematicians of the 20th century. What I got out of these mere 280 pages was a lot more than just that. Hoffman stayed away from a typical biography layout that starts with birth and ends with death. Rather, he jumps from era to era, subject to subject. And he does it all so gracefully that he never loses the reader. There's also a lot more than just a biography here. The supporting cast, the history, the math is exhillarating. Anecdotes he cites of Erdos (Good morning, let p be a prime...) are hilarious as well as very useful in getting to know this genius. If I had to mention a shortcoming I would say that you don't learn much about specific achievements of Erdos in the field of mathematics, like theorems he proved or the topics of the papers he wrote. Overall, though, an excellent book...
|
