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New Orleans
Aug. 29th, 2005 09:47 amWell, that's not good :-( I have fond memories of New Orleans, and I'd like it to still be there next week, please.
Aug. 29th, 2005
The Happy End Problem
Aug. 29th, 2005 02:08 pmSome of you will have heard of Paul Erdős, the famous Hungarian mathematician. Erdős was famous for a number of things besides his own mathematical results. He wandered around the world with a suitcase full of mathematics and amphetamines; he would show up unexpectedly on a colleague's doorstep, stay for a few days of mathematical work, and then wander on to another collaboration somewhere else. He talked about people who'd stopped doing mathematics as having 'died', and he spoke of 'the Book', in which God (or, as Erdős called him, the 'Supreme Fascist') kept all the best and most elegant proofs of mathematical theorems.
Above all, he was famous for the volume and range of his collaborative work; while Erdős was an impressive mathematician in his own right, his greatest contribution to 20th-century mathematics was the way in which he brought people together. Mathematicians celebrate this with the concept of the Erdős number: Erdős' number was 0, the 500-odd people who co-authored papers with him had number 1, their co-authors have number 2, and so on. Most mathematicians link to Erdős in less than five steps.
Erdős' first two co-authors, back in 1934, were a fellow called Turán (who has no further part in this tale) and another Hungarian Jew by the name of George Szekeres. Not too long after that, George and his wife Esther - also a Hungarian Jew - fled Europe for Australia via Shanghai. They became fixtures of the local mathematical scene; George was Professor of Mathematics at UNSW for many years, and although he retired in 1976 he was the sort of person to whom that just means 'no longer drawing a paycheck'. I met them once or twice, although![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
reynardo's mother knew them better than me.
Anyway, Rey just called to let me know that George and Esther both died yesterday; they'd been in poor health for a while, and they passed away within about an hour of one another. While trying to remember how to spell 'Szekeres', I came across ( a rather sweet story... )
Above all, he was famous for the volume and range of his collaborative work; while Erdős was an impressive mathematician in his own right, his greatest contribution to 20th-century mathematics was the way in which he brought people together. Mathematicians celebrate this with the concept of the Erdős number: Erdős' number was 0, the 500-odd people who co-authored papers with him had number 1, their co-authors have number 2, and so on. Most mathematicians link to Erdős in less than five steps.
Erdős' first two co-authors, back in 1934, were a fellow called Turán (who has no further part in this tale) and another Hungarian Jew by the name of George Szekeres. Not too long after that, George and his wife Esther - also a Hungarian Jew - fled Europe for Australia via Shanghai. They became fixtures of the local mathematical scene; George was Professor of Mathematics at UNSW for many years, and although he retired in 1976 he was the sort of person to whom that just means 'no longer drawing a paycheck'. I met them once or twice, although
reynardo's mother knew them better than me.Anyway, Rey just called to let me know that George and Esther both died yesterday; they'd been in poor health for a while, and they passed away within about an hour of one another. While trying to remember how to spell 'Szekeres', I came across ( a rather sweet story... )