Finally, I Am Becoming Stupider No More

These are the words inscribed on the tomb stone of Paul Erdos, pronounced “Air-Dish”, the late Hungarian mathematician. Born on March 26, 1913 in Budapest and died on Sept 20, 1996 in Warsaw, Poland, Paul Erdos was the most prolific mathematician of the 20th century, having published over 1500 papers with 485 collaborators.

Better known as the queer mathematician mastermind, who called women “bosses” and men “slaves”, Erdos led a most extraordinary life. Living off two suitcases and no permanent job, he traveled extensively on a circuit of 25 countries throughout his life. He went from doorstep to doorstep of mathematicians, declaring his mind “open”, and working on mathematical problems 19 hours a day.

But what made Paul Erdos the man he was? Who would, in his right state of mind, give up all worldly pleasures and even necessities to pursue an almost fictitious life of chasing numbers. Having learnt how to add and subtract by the age of 3, and discovered the existence of negative numbers and the horrible truth of death at the age of 4, Erdos’s life was a most remarkable one indeed.

From his queer and sometimes shocking mannerisms, to his constant fear of death and meeting the “Supreme Fascist”, a name he had coined for God Himself, everyone who met him remembered him long afterward for all his idiosyncrasies. He was especially fond of children, whom he called “epsilons”, a Greek alphabet used in mathematics to denote extremely small quantities. In fact, he frequently visited high schools, primary schools and even nurseries to lecture on mathematics and had an eye for good talent. He would often talk to the parents of children interested in mathematics and was responsible for “discovering” quite a few mathematical prodigies.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, he was always sad when someone left mathematics, or as he called it, when someone “died”. When someone actually died, he said that they had simply “left”. When he asked you how long had it been since you arrived, he meant to ask you your age.

Mathematics was the only real love of his life. He never had any sexual relations with anyone and the only other thing in life that he seemed to care about was politics, having been shuffled around quite a lot between his home country, Hungary and the United States, at one point of which, both countries denied him visa on grounds that he was a spy working for the other country.

Other people got annoyed with Erdos too. He would often show up at the doorstep of a mathematician he did not know, unannounced, ready to solve math problems. His hosts would often oblige, but his queer mannerisms got to them soon after. Having only one set of clothes meant that his host’s wife often had to do his laundry for him everyday. He would bang utensils together in the middle of the night to wake them up to help him solve a math problem. He would spill water all over the kitchen floor or spill juice inside the refrigerator. His hosts often had long telephone bills after he left. He would call someone up in the middle of the night to share an interesting math problem.

He even had someone to do all his accounts for him, a mathematician named Ronald Graham. He was one of Erdos’s closest friends and would keep track of all his money for him, in addition to all the loans he had took from various people. Thus, free of worries of all sorts, Paul Erdos was free to do mathematics all day long, as he wanted, without the tiniest worry in the world. He even took amphetamines to cut back on food and sleep so that he could work 19 hours a day.

So what exactly led a man to throw away everything that life had to offer and take up something as abstract as the study of numbers? Clearly he wasn’t interested in money. He gave all the money he earned at talks to charities or friends. He wasn’t into fame either. The famous controversy over the Erdos-Selberg paper on the Prime Number Theorem in 1949 when Selberg took the major part of the credit for the combined paper by publishing beforehand for which he won the Field Medal, the closest thing to a Nobel Prize in mathematics. Throughout his life, Erdos didn’t seek to clarify the controversy and wasn’t interested in it in the least bit.

He wasn’t doing it for mankind’s health either. He hardly cared what anyone thought of him and clearly led an extraordinarily selfish life. He didn’t seem interested in you if you didn’t know mathematics. He refused to shake hands with people, even with his biographer Paul Hoffman. He often quarreled with people, who were often trying to help him. His surgeon had to call someone from the University to talk mathematics with Erdos during his cataract operation because he refused to stop doing mathematics, even for a second. He kicked his doctor out of his hotel room during a conference because he was busy doing mathematics with his colleagues.

He wasn’t religious either. Although born a Jew, he led the life of an agnostic. At age 6, his mother suggested that he be baptized in order to escape persecution by the Nazis but he wouldn’t hear of it. Although skeptical of the existence of God, he firmly believed in His “book” which he said contained all the beautiful truths of the world, including all mathematical theorems and proofs. He was always blaming the “Supreme Fascist” (SF or God) for keeping His Book hidden from mankind and for misplacing his passport, socks, glasses, etc. Whenever he would see a beautiful proof to a theorem, he would remark “This one’s from the Book!”

So what was it that made Erdos tick? Or, a more appropriate question we should ask ourselves is “What makes ourselves not tick?” How many of us would gladly give up food and sleep to do mathematics 19 hours a day, or any other science for that matter? How many of us travel from door to door studying mathematics or science? How many of us would forego prestigious positions and handsome salaries and rewards to pursue our dreams? It is only befitting then, that the cradle of modern science lie in the West and that we only follow, light years behind.