"Why are numbers beautiful? It's like asking why is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don't see why, someone can't tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is." -- Paul Erdős
Paul Erdos was a brilliant 20th century mathematician born in Hungary. A unique individual, he was revered by many mathematicians and traveled the world, staying with colleagues with whom he could work on math problems. He published over 1500 pieces of original mathematics. It was a privilege to have Paul Erdos stay in your home, but he was loathe to stay long. He lived out of a scantily and poorly packed suitcase; even charity did not want this suit after he died.
In class, we discussed the Erdos number and the concept of an Erdos problem.
There are many fun stories about Paul Erdos, find one (or more) and share it in your blog. You can discover what he wanted his epitaph to be, or how he cut grapefruit with the dull edge of a knife. You can discover what degrees he earned, where he studied, where he traveled, and how he moved around in the world. You can find some stories in the following NYT article. You can also search on what interested him most in mathematics; his ideas were deeply complex, but see what you can glean from what you find about him on the internet.
He died in 1996
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