From the author, phoffman@eb.com,
"A mathematical genius of the first order, Paul
Erdös was totally obsessed with his subject--he thought
and wrote mathematics for nineteen hours a day until the
day he died," wrote Oliver Sacks. "He traveled
constantly, living out of a plastic bag, and had no
interest in food, sex, companionship, art--all that is
usually indispensable to a human life. Paul Hoffman, in
this marvelous biography, gives us a vivid--and strangely
moving--portrait of this singular creature, one that
brings out not only Erdös's genius and his oddness, but
his warmth and sense of fun, the joyfulness of his
strange life." The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is
the first book-length biography of Paul Erdös. I've
tried to offer an intimate look at this gentle genius and
his circle of mathematical eccentrics, from
Bungee-jumping Ron Graham, who was cited in the Guinness
Book of World Records for having used the largest number
in a mathematical proof, to the brilliant number theorist
who would only have sex with his wife on prime-numbered
days ("It was pretty good early in the month--two,
three, five, seven--but got tough toward the end, when
the primes are thinner, nineteen, twenty-three, then a
big gap till twenty-nine").
In this playful work, supported by 16 pages of
photographs that show Erdös from a toddler to an old
man, I use Erdös's life story to introduce
non-mathematicians to a cast of remarkable numerati, from
Archimedes and Pythagoras to Stanislaw Ulam, one of the
chief minds behind the Los Alamos nuclear project. I've
drawn on years of interviews with Graham and Fan Chung,
Erdös's chief American caretakers and devoted
collaborators. What emerges is the story of Erdös and
his magnificent obsession--the pursuit of mathematical
truth--told against the backdrop of Fascism and the Cold
War. The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is also the story of
the spiritual and universal beauty of numbers, a book
that captures, I hope, the poetry! ! of mathematics; for
Erdös, Graham, and their colleagues, m! athematics is
order and beauty at its purest, order that transcends the
physical world.
I first met Erdös in 1986 and interviewed him over
the last ten years of his life, even following him on his
mathematical sojourns. My 1987 profile of Erdös in The
Atlantic Monthly won the first National Magazine award
for feature writing.
Reviewers have said:
"A minor classic written with amazing clarity and
wit." --judges National Magazine Awards (describing
the article that grew into this book)
"An affectionate if impressionistic portrayal of
one of the century's greatest and strangest
mathematicians… Hoffman creates a full-bodied and
eccentric character out of hundreds of quotations and
anecdotes… Though a biography, this book works like
the best fiction." --Kirkus Reviews
"Hoffman never loses the golden thread of
Erdös's genius and humanity, leading the reader through
a vital computational life." --Publishers Weekly
