Born, March 26, 1913

Budapest, Hungary
Most known for writing more
mathemati cal papers than
any other mathemati ci an,
with 511 different collabora-
tors. He considered writing
papers a social activity.

As a chi l d, at age 3, he
amused himself by asking
people when their birthday
was, and then cal cul ati ng
how many seconds they had
lived.

As a 4-year-ol d he coul d
multiply three and four digit
numbers in his head.

He once calculated how far

away the sun is at age 5
because his mother told him
how long it would take a
train to get there.

When he was 19 or 20, he

proved Chebychevs theo-
rem, that there is always a
pri me number between n
and 2n.

Died, Sept. 20, 1996

Warsaw, Poland
Paul Erds traveled constant-
ly, so he used something to
carry his belongings - one suit-
case.

Paul Erds is recognized for:

Erds number
Erds cardinal
Erds conjecture on arithmetic pro-
gressions
CameronErds conjecture
ErdsBurr conjecture
ErdsFaberLovsz conjecture
ErdsGraham conjecture
ErdsGyrfs conjecture
ErdsStraus conjecture
ErdsTurn conjecture
CopelandErds constant
de BruijnErds theorem
de BruijnErds theorem
ErdsAnning theorem
ErdsBacon number
ErdsBeck theorem
ErdsBorwein constant
ErdsDiophantine graph
ErdsDushnikMiller theorem
ErdsKac theorem
ErdsKoRado theorem
ErdsMordell inequality
ErdsNagy theorem
ErdsRado theorem
ErdsRnyi model
ErdsStone theorem
ErdsSzekeres theorem
ErdsTurn inequality
ErdsWoods number
by Ash Hurdle
Paul Erds, the Hungarian mathematician, was famously prolific, with
hundreds of collaborators in his lifetime. To honor him, mathematicians cal-
culate their Erds Numbers: Paul Erds himself has an Erds Number of
zero. Everyone that he directly collaborated with has an Erds Number of
one, everyone that they collaborated with has an Erds Number of two, and
so on. Because his work was so varied, no person has a high number.
This also happens in other fields. In physics, for example, people calcu-
late their Pauli Numbers, for Wolfgang Pauli, and of course, in the movie
industry, people calculate their Bacon Numbers, for Kevin Bacon. Some very
cool individuals have both an Erds Number and a Bacon Number, allowing
them to calculate their (finite) Erds-Bacon Number. The smallest known
Erds-Bacon Number is three, and it belongs to Daniel Kleitman, a mathe-
matician at MIT.
Whats your Erds number?
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6