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Paul Erdõs, one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, and certainly the most eccentric, was internationally recognized as a prodigy by age seventeen. Hungarian-born Erdõs believed that the meaning of life was to prove and conjecture. His work in the United States and all over the world has earned him the titles of the century's leading number theorist and the most prolific mathematician who ever lived. Erdõs's important work has proved pivotal to the development of computer science, and his unique personality makes him an unforgettable character in the world of mathematics. Incapable of the smallest of household tasks and having no permanent home or job, he was sustained by the generosity of colleagues and by his own belief in the beauty of numbers.

Witty and filled with the sort of mathematical puzzles that intrigued Erdõs and continue to fascinate mathematicians today, My Brain Is Open is the story of this strange genius and a journey in his footsteps through the world of mathematics, where universal truths await discovery like hidden treasures and where brilliant proofs are poetry.Amazon.com Review
Physicist and science writer Bruce Schechter's biography oflegendary Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdös is an engagingportrait, warm and intimate, bringing this strange, happy man tolife. Schechter's focus is quite a bit tighter, and more traditionallybiographical, than Paul Hoffman's in The Man Who Loved OnlyNumbers. Here, we get to see Erdös's brief childhoodtransform quickly into a carefree adolescence of solving difficultmath problems with his circle of brilliant friends--uniquelyencouraged by a country that valued the contributions of mathematicsin a way that has never been equaled. Fleeing the Holocaust,Erdös never settled down, instead traveling from place to place,showing up on the doorsteps of other mathematicians with his fewpossessions and an open mind. During his career, Erdös publishedmore papers than any other mathematician in history. Most of thepapers were collaborations:

For Erdös, the mathematics that consumed most of hiswaking hours was not a solitary pursuit but a social activity. One ofthe great mathematical discoveries of the twentieth century was thesimple equation that two heads are better than one.... That radicaltransformation of how mathematics is created is the result of manyfactors, not the least of which was the infectious example set byErdös.

Schechter spoke with many of Erdös's collaborators to completethis biography, which reveals the odd mathematician as charming,opinionated, and completely dependent upon the kindness ofothers. Schechter not only tells his fascinating story, but introducessome intriguing mathematics problems (with easy-to-understandexplanations) to show readers why Erdös loved the eleganceof numbers more than anything else in the world.--ThereseLittleton ... Read more

Customer Reviews (34)

To prove and conjecture: great book about beautiful mind and sad life.
Shurik, a friend of mine I used to share student dorm with, was a mathematician. Algebraist, to be precise. We talked a lot discussing multitude of topics, not necessarily mathematical ones. In those days hot water was customarily shut off across campus during summer season so students could prepare for exams without such a distraction as hot showers. That fact prompted me to comment that our lifestyle, while notably different, still somewhat resembles what a lifestyle in Upper Paleolithic might look like. Shurik was digesting my remark for a few moments with the stamp of intense thinking on his face (his Calculus test was next day), then said excitedly:

- Dude, you know why there was no hot water in Upper Paleolithic? That's because the water pressure was not strong enough in the Lower Paleolithic!

That insignificant episode from my student years characterizes true mathematicians very eloquently. They are quite unusual breed of humankind with extraordinary abilities to locate not very obvious properties and relations in seemingly regular objects and notions. Having been exposed to interaction with mathematicians for sometime I, by the time the book of Mr. Schechter was read through, felt I knew Paul Erdos almost personally. Very light and elegant writing style of the author was a contributing factor as well.

Mathematicians rarely can be aggressive. Usually, they are very sensitive and kind people. In this regard the portrait of Paul Erdos by Mr. Schechter goes along quite naturally with my experience of dealing with them. At the same time that portrait leaves a very sad impression of the true inner nature of Erdos - depressingly lonely person, with no family and no home. The deep tragedy of the Erdos family with Paul's siblings gone by disease, father's suffering in Russian exile, terrible WWII ordeals - all that makes you wonder how Paul and his parents can continue "to prove and conjecture" so successfully under such horrendous circumstances? Author partly explains this phenomenon very brightly describing the scientific and especially educational traditions in Hungary before the war. Indeed, the density of incredible talents generated in this small central European country somewhat shocking. It underscores how important the role of truly good teacher in elementary school can be. Taking into account all that and also the fact that both parents of Erdos were superior math teachers in high school themselves a reader can see the roots of the enormous productivity of Erdos, who published more math papers in multiple branches of it than any other scientist in history. But it also can be a city of Budapest whose streets, as per Mr. Schechter, are very inviting for any kind or scientific reasoning - although not a scientist myself, I did experience the same when I was roaming with friends along Duna shores in Buda one summer.

The mathematical content of the book is very engaging for non-mathematicians. It is explained almost with no formulas but Mr. Schechter manages to convey the depth of the mathematical ideas very well without them. It is especially applicable to the chapter about prime numbers. The primes, although endless in the set of integers, do have very strange properties. Take the theorem proved by Chebychev first and re-proved by Erdos by elementary means - between N and 2N there is always a prime. At the same time we know that the intervals without primes can be as long as one would wish. At first glance two facts seems to contradict to each other but they do not. Facts like that are abundant in the Numbers Theory with most enigmatic one as a problem of primes distribution and Riemann function. Mr. Schechter does a good job providing historical background of the Numbers Theory, its evolution, contributions of Paul Erdos and controversy of Erdos and Selberg.

I have to admit the author did a brilliant homework researching all kinds of details pertinent to mathematics and its origins. I did enjoy pages about clay table Plimpton 322 with its incredible content of Pythagorean triplets as well as multitude of other stories like most bizarre "application" of Numbers Theory when close collaborator of Erdos avoided deportation to Gulag just because he happened to have his publication on the subject in Russian mathematical magazine with him. In this regard, the book of Mr. Schechtercan be considered as not so much as biography of Paul Erdos but as biography of mathematics as a scientific discipline. Humor, albeit sometimes very dark (for example, about math students, who were "studying" Jordan theorem being confined to "inner area", id est being imprisoned) sparking the text regularly and appropriately.

Mathematics is somewhat similar to soccer. While everybody can perceive the beauty of ball handling by say Riquelme or Robinho, very few of us can do the same on the soccer field. In math, formulation of the conjecture can be deceptively simple and elegant, and most of us can understand it well. At the same time, it is very different story once you start thinking about trying to prove that conjecture. In many cases it might require years of learning and tons of exercises. But even that no guarantee to success. The inclination to a special way of thinking is required. In this regard, magic of Riquelme on the stadium is direct equivalent of wizardry of Erdos in Numbers Theory. The books similar to Mr. Schechter facilitate our comprehension of the conjecture beyond mere formulation, opening the curtain after which the proof is hidden.

On the other note, I can't stop thinking of what kind of future European science might have should its development was not brutally aborted by sad realities of Second World War. True, many of bright Hungarian (and other) minds escaped from the inferno of warfare and extermination campaigns; true, many of them intensified their research in military related directions and achieved significant results. Still so many perished needlessly making a good number of famous European scientific centers empty and forgotten for a very long time. It seems incredible that one person's paranoia can mercilessly terminate so much in such a short period of time. Let's us hope the future Erdoses will never be forced to travel so intensively against their wills even with theirs brains open so widely.

The perfect man of knowledge
If one has to define a perfect man of knowledge, one would come up with someone who is a genius, has done pioneering work in several areas of his domain, is friendly and sociable towards all (especially 'epsilons' or children), finds material possessions as a hassle and spends all his time doing what he loves best. In other words, someone just like Paul Erdos.

In this short and engaging biography, the author manages to inform and entertain at the same time. Apart from the life-story of Erdos himself which is fascinating, what I also enjoyed are the anecdotes on other greats like Gauss and Ramanujan. And there is just enough math in the book (explained very well) to interest us so that we get a glimpse of what lies at the heart of it all.

I cannot think of a better gift than this book to be given to any child to provide inspiration as well as a 'cool' introduction to mathematics. Highly recommended.

N is a Number: True Story of the Travelling Mathematician
+++++

The four-word title of this book is "My Brain Is Open."If you keep the first word and form a word from the first letter of the three remaining words, you get "My BIO."And that's exactly what this book is.This ten chapter book, by Dr. Bruce Schechter, is a BIOgraphy of Dr. Paul Erdos (pronounced "Air-dish").

Erdos (1913 to 1996) is said to have been one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century (especially in number theory, the branch of math concerned with the properties of integers) as well as the most eccentric.Throughout this book, we also learn of the many others who collaborated with Erdos on his many published mathematical papers.(He wrote or collaborated on more than 1500 papers with over 450 collaborators.)

This book is also filled with the sorts of mathematical puzzles that intrigued Erdos and continue to fascinate mathematicians today.Schechter does a good job of explaining these puzzles (with the aid of diagrams, tables, and graphs) so the reader does not have to worry that these problems will be too difficult to understand.

The reader is also taken on a tour of mathematics.We are introduced to such people as Pythagoras and his famous theorem, Karl Gauss who, when ten years old, was able to add up the numbers from 1 to 100 in less than half a minute, and Bernhard Reimann and his work on prime numbers.

Erdos was born in Hungry.By age seventeen he had gained international recognition as a prodigy.He eventually left Hungry and went to the Institute of Advanced Study at Princton in the United States.(Einstein was the institutes most famous resident then.)Because of his politics, he was exiled from the U.S. for a decade.From this point beginning in the 1950s, he became "the Bob Hope of mathematics" or "the travelling mathematician."

Since Erdos was constantly travelling, he had no home or job but still managed to meet with math colleagues all over the world.He had all his belongings in a suitcase and his mathematical papers in a bag when he arrived at their homes.Erdos also depended on the generosity of colleagues to sustain him.

The reader is introduced to Erdos' eccentricities throughout the book.For example, he invented a vocabulary where the U.S. was "Sam" or "Samland" (after Uncle Sam) and the Soviet Union was "Joe" or "Joedom" (after Josef Stalin).

There are more than fifteen black and white photographs found in the middle of this book.These photos span a period from 1916 to 1993.

To get the information needed to write this book, Schechter relied "on the memories of the many people" who met Erdos -- his hundreds of collaborators and friends.That is, he "primarily relied on interviews with many of the people who knew Erdos best."Schechter also "drew heavily" from biographical essays as well as magazine articles about Erdos.He also used the information from the over ninety sources listed in this book's bibliography.

Finally, as I said above, this book does contain mathematical puzzles that intrigued Erdos.Personally, I found these interesting but some readers may find that they interfere with the flow of the book.As well, mathematicians who read this book may question the accuracy of a few of the mathematical concepts that are introduced.

In conclusion, this book invites the reader into the wacky world of mathematical genius Paul Erdos.If you're like me, you'll find this book both comical and enlightening!!

+++++

The hidden magic of math
Bruce Schechter's book is exceptional.In telling this fascinating story of the eccentric mathematician Paul Erdos, the author manages to convey the recent history of math and capture the magic of this unique art/science.Quite an accomplishment for a book that is so enjoyable to read!

The Remarkable Saga of a Remarkable Man
Paul Erdos was a unique individual.He never had a permanent residence; instead, he traveled from one mathematics conference to another with his few earthly belongings in two suitcases, one which held a few changes of clothes, the other a treasure of mathematics papers.He collaborated with mathematicians everywhere; the extent of these collaborations is so immense it gave rise to the Erdos number, which is this: You have an Erdos number of 1 if you co-authored a paper with Erdos, your Erdos number is 2 if you co-authored a paper with someone who jointly wrote a paper with Erdos, etc.About 500 people have an Erdos number of 1 and well over 5000 hold the Erdos number of 2.Erdos numbers go as high as 16 and the number of people with an Erdos number is said to be well above 100,000.

Stories about Erdos abound.It is rumored that he walked into a classroom, saw some writing on a chalkboard and asked if this was mathematics.Upon receiving an affirmative answer, he then asked what the various symbols were.Immediately after the explanations were given, Erdos took chalk in hand and in two lines proved the hypothesis that had baffled other mathematicians for some time, and this was in a field of mathematics that Erdos was largely unfamiliar with!Another story had Erdos taking a train fron Boston to New York; across the aisle sat a beautiful female who said "hello" to him.One thing led to another; by the time the train arrived the two of them had written a paper!

This book covered much of the life and mathematics of Paul Erdos; much of the mathematics in the book is number theory because it is a topic that is easy for anyone to understand yet difficult to prove.A typical example is Goldbach's conjecture, which says: "Any even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers."Sounds simple enough and logical; 4=2+2, 6=3+3, 8=3+5,10=5+5 or 3+7,...The problem has been around for about 300 years but as yet lacks a proof.Other mathematics topics touched upon include Ramsey theory, the division of a square into unequal squares, and Godel's Incompleteness Theory.The book also shows the strange language of Erdos, in which women were 'bosses', men were 'slaves', the United States was 'Sam' (from Uncle Sam), and the Soviet Union was 'Joe' (Stalin), to list a few of his own variations of English.

This book is easy to read, even if the reader has only a high-school background in mathematics.If you are curious about mathematics and/or human nature, you will find this book of great interest.I highly recommend this book. ... Read more

Product Description
Paul Erd+¦s was an amazing and prolific mathematician whose life as a world-wandering numerical nomad was legendary. He published almost 1500 scholarly papers before his death in 1996, and he probably thought more about math problems than anyone in history. Like a traveling salesman offering his thoughts as wares, Erd+¦s would show up on the doorstep of one mathematician or another and announce, "My brain is open." After working through a problem, he'd move on to the next place, the next solution.Hoffman's book, like Sylvia Nasar's biography of John Nash, A Beautiful Mind, reveals a genius's life that transcended the merely quirky. But Erd+¦s's brand of madness was joyful, unlike Nash's despairing schizophrenia. Erd+¦s never tried to dilute his obsessive passion for numbers with ordinary emotional interactions, thus avoiding hurting the people around him, as Nash did. Oliver Sacks writes of Erd+¦s: "A mathematical genius of the first order, Paul Erd+¦s was totally obsessed with his subject--he thought and wrote mathematics for nineteen hours a day until the day he died. 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."The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is easy to love, despite his strangeness. It's hard not to have affection for someone who referred to children as "epsilons," from the Greek letter used to represent small quantities in mathematics; a man whose epitaph for himself read, "Finally I am becoming stupider no more"; and whose only really necessary tool to do his work was a quiet and open mind.Hoffman, who followed and spoke with Erd+¦s over the last 10 years of his life, introduces us to an undeniably odd, yet pure and joyful, man who loved numbers more than he loved God--whom he referred to as SF, for Supreme Fascist. He was often misunderstood, and he certainly annoyed people sometimes, but Paul Erd+¦s is no doubt missed. --Therese LittletonAmazon.com Review
Paul Erdös was an amazing and prolific mathematicianwhose life as a world-wandering numerical nomad was legendary. Hepublished almost 1500 scholarly papers before his death in 1996, andhe probably thought more about math problems than anyone inhistory. Like a traveling salesman offering his thoughts as wares,Erdös would show up on the doorstep of one mathematician oranother and announce, "My brain is open." After workingthrough a problem, he'd move on to the next place, the nextsolution.

Hoffman's book, like Sylvia Nasar's biography of John Nash, A Beautiful Mind,reveals a genius's life that transcended the merely quirky. ButErdös's brand of madness was joyful, unlike Nash's despairingschizophrenia. Erdös never tried to dilute his obsessive passionfor numbers with ordinary emotional interactions, thus avoidinghurting the people around him, as Nash did. Oliver Sackswrites of Erdös: "A mathematical genius of the first order,Paul Erdös was totally obsessed with his subject--he thought andwrote mathematics for nineteen hours a day until the day he died. Hetraveled constantly, living out of a plastic bag, and had no interestin food, sex, companionship, art--all that is usually indispensable toa human life."

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is easy to love, despite hisstrangeness. It's hard not to have affection for someone who referredto children as "epsilons," from the Greek letter used torepresent small quantities in mathematics; a man whose epitaph forhimself read, "Finally I am becoming stupider no more"; andwhose only really necessary tool to do his work was a quiet and openmind.Hoffman, who followed and spoke with Erdös over the last10 years of his life, introduces us to an undeniably odd, yet pure andjoyful, man who loved numbers more than he loved God--whom he referredto as SF, for Supreme Fascist. He was often misunderstood, and hecertainly annoyed people sometimes, but Paul Erdös is no doubtmissed. --Therese Littleton ... Read more

Customer Reviews (99)

Poorly written
I liked the early part of the book, but Hoffman's style of stringing together a bunch of different anecdotes only loosely connected became grating. I stopped at page 150.

Really enjoyed this book!
A very enjoyable read.So glad my husband came home with the wrong book.I decided to read it anyway and am so happy I did.

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers

Paul Erdos (1913-1996), as a youth in Budapest, was a mathematical prodigy. As an adult, he was a kind-hearted, generous man, who because of the generosity of others, was able to live the life of a perpetually traveling mathematician. His intellectual and aesthetic response to the experience of being involved with mathematics superseded all else. To the end of his life, he was a brilliant, extraordinarily prolific number theorist who collaborated with 485 individuals and published 1,475 papers. This book is a popularization meant to celebrate Paul Erdos and inspire an interest in number theory. It is not a dispassionate look at his life. This means it is incomplete and biased. It may in fact be a misrepresentation.

Judging from Hoffman's account, Paul Erdos was a gentle and good man, but he was also eccentric. There are many examples in the book of his eccentricity, but his idiosyncratic language when referring to other human beings, is a prominent example. Hoffman gives the impression it was habitual. It was, I suppose, a form of self-indulgent humor that through overuse and social reinforcement became a part of his external persona. One would hope that during earnest, solemn conversation and especially within his private self he didn't hide behind such distorted, frivolous language. If he did, he was a lesser man because of it.

Does what it should
Nicely written.Clearly, the writer is fond of the subject.After reading this book, most readers will be too.

C-
The author obviously did not have enough material for a book.He constantly digresses from one topic to another, and goes into distinct subjects with detail, obviously just to fill up space.It is the same trick high school students try to pull off to meet the minimum number of pages requirement in their writing assignments.If I did not think this practice were disrespectful towards the reader, I might even commend Hoffman for his effort at trying to link so many unrelated topics back to Erdös.That requires quite a deal of artistry.But it does not really work towards making the reader think the digressions are relevant to the story. ... Read more

Product Description
This rather unique book is a guided tour through number theory. While most introductions to number theory provide a systematic and exhaustive treatment of the subject, the authors have chosen instead to illustrate the many varied subjects by associating recent discoveries, interesting method, and unsolved problems. In particular, we read about combinatorial problems in number theory, a branch of mathematics co-founded and popularized by Paul Erdös. Janos Suranyi's vast teaching experience successfully complements Paul Erdös' ability to initiate new directions of research by suggesting new problems and approaches. This book will surely arouse the interest of the student and the teacher alike.

Until his death in 1996, Professor Paul Erdös was one of the most prolific mathematicians ever, publishing close to 1,500 papers. While his papers contributed to almost every area of mathematics, his main research interest was in the area of combinatorics, graph theory, and number theory. He is most famous for proposing problems to the mathematical community which were exquisitely simple to understand yet difficult to solve. He was awarded numerous prestigious prizes including the Frank Nelson Cole prize of the AMS.

Professor Janos Suranyi is a leading personality in Hungary, not just within the mathematical community, but also in the planning and conducting of different educational projects whiich have led to a new secondary school curriculum. His activity has been recognized by, amongst others, the Middle Cross of the Hungarian Decoration and the Erdös Award of the World Federation of National Mathematical Competitions.rian Decoration and the Erdös Award of the World Federation of National Mathematical Competitions. ... Read more

Product Description
This collection of surveys and research papers on recent topics of interest in combinatorics is dedicated to Paul Erdös, who attended the conference and who is represented by two articles in the collection, including one, unfinished, which he was writing on the eve of his sudden death. Erdös was one of the greatest mathematicians of his century and often the subject of anecdotes about his somewhat unusual lifestyle. A new preface, written by friends and colleagues, gives a flavor of his life, including many such stories, and also describes the broad outline and importance of his work in combinatorics and other related fields. ... Read more

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This volume is dedicated to Paul Erdos, who has profoundly influenced mathematics in this century, with over 1200 papers on number theory, complex analysis, probability theory, geometry, interpretation theory, algebra set theory and combinatorics. One of Erdos' hallmarks is the host of stimulating problems and conjectures, to many of which he has attached monetary prices, in accordance with their notoriety. A feature of this volume is a collection of some fifty outstanding unsolved problems, together with their "values." ... Read more

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Paul Erdös, who has been called the world's greatest problem poser and solver, has published more papers than any mathematician alive. The aim of this selection from his vast output is to bring together his most important papers. Over 80 contributions are included, which are grouped into four parts and sixteen chapters as follows: Papers of Special Interest: an early gem—problems; Graph Theory: representation of graphs—coloring of graphs—extremal graph theory—circuits—assorted graph theory; Combinatorial Analysis; Ramsey's theorem—property B—systems of sets—block designs—tournaments—information theory; Miscellany: random objects—Latin squares—geometry.

Erdös is a kind of mathematical wandering scholar. Over the past 40 years, he has traveled to more than 200 universities throughout the world, posing problems and giving lectures: "I have no permanent position or address." ... Read more

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Since his death in 1996, many scientific meetings have been dedicated to the memory of Paul Erdös. From July 4 to 11, 1999, the conference "Paul Erdös and his Mathematics" was held in Budapest, with the ambitious goal of showing the whole range of Erdös' work - a difficult task in view of Erdös' versatility and his broad scope of interest in mathematics. According to this goal, the topics of plenary lectures and parallel sections included number theory, combinatorics, analysis, set theory, probability, geometry and areas connecting them, like ergodic theory. The conference has contributed to changing the common view that Erdös worked only in combinatorics and combinatorial number theory. In the present two volumes, the editors have collected, besides some personal reminiscences by Erdös' old friends, mainly survey articles of a different nature: on his work, and on areas he initiated or worked in. ... Read more

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The areas represented in this collection range from set theory and geometry through graph theory, group theory and combinatorial probability, to randomized algorithms and statistical physics. Erdös himself was able to give a survey of recent progress made on his favorite problems. Consequently this volume, comprised of in-depth studies at the frontier of research, provides a valuable panorama across the breadth of combinatorics as it is today. ... Read more

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This volume contains a collection of papers in Analytic andElementary Number Theory in memory of Professor Paul Erdös, oneof the greatest mathematicians of this century. Written by manyleading researchers, the papers deal with the most recent advances ina wide variety of topics, including arithmetical functions, primenumbers, the Riemann zeta function, probabilistic number theory,properties of integer sequences, modular forms, partitions, andq-series.
Audience: Researchers and students of number theory, analysis,combinatorics and modular forms will find this volume to bestimulating. ... Read more

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This work presents the most important combinatorial ideas in partition calculus and discusses ordinary partition relations for cardinals without the assumption of the generalized continuum hypothesis. A separate section of the book describes the main partition symbols scattered in the literature. A chapter on the applications of the combinatorial methods in partition calculus includes a section on topology with Arhangel'skii's famous result that a first countable compact Hausdorff space has cardinality, at most continuum. Several sections on set mappings are included as well as an account of recent inequalities for cardinal powers that were obtained in the wake of Silver's breakthrough result saying that the continuum hypothesis can not first fail at a singular cardinal of uncountable cofinality. ... Read more

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Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Carl Friedrich Gauss, Leonhard Euler, John Von Neumann, William Rowan Hamilton, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Paul Erdős, Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, Mental Calculator, George Parker Bidder, Tathagat Avatar Tulsi, Shakuntala Devi, Jedediah Buxton, Jakow Trachtenberg, Mental Calculation World Cup, Willis Dysart, Alberto Coto García, Karl Ramsayer, Zerah Colburn, Salo Finkelstein, Scott Flansburg, Johann Dase, Anne-Marie Imafidon, Truman Henry Safford, Hans Eberstark, Thomas Fuller, Willem Klein, Gert Mittring, Michael Byster, Divesh Shah, Jan Van Koningsveld, George Lane, Jacques Inaudi. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: Pachaiyappa's College, Trinity College, CambridgeSrnivsa Aiyangr Rmnujan FRS, better known as Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan (Tamil: ) (22 December 1887 26 April 1920) was an Indian mathematician and autodidact who, with almost no formal training in pure mathematics, made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series and continued fractions. Born and raised in Erode, Tamil Nadu, India, Ramanujan first encountered formal mathematics at age 10. He demonstrated a natural ability, and was given books on advanced trigonometry written by S L Loney. He had mastered them by age 12, and even discovered theorems of his own. He demonstrated unusual mathematical skills at school, winning accolades and awards. By 17, Ramanujan conducted his own mathematical research on Bernoulli numbers and the EulerMascheroni constant. He received a scholarship to study at Government College in Kumbakonam, but lost it when he failed his non-mathematical coursework. He joined another college to pursue independent mathematical research, working as a clerk in the Accountant-General's office at the Madras Port Trust Office to support hims...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=47717 ... Read more

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This is the most comprehensive survey of the mathematical life of the legendary Paul Erdös, one of the most versatile and prolific mathematicians of our time. For the first time, all the main areas of Erdös' research are covered in a single project. Because of overwhelming response from the mathematical community, the project now occupies over 900 pages, arranged into two volumes. These volumes contain both high level research articles as well as "key" articles which survey some of the cornerstones of Erdös' work, each written by a leading world specialist in the field. A special chapter "Early Days", rare photographs, and art related to Erdös complement this striking collection. A unique contribution is the bibliography on Erdös' publications: the most comprehensive ever published. ... Read more

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Der Erwerb des Buches enthält gleichzeitig die kostenlose Mitgliedschaft im Buchklub des Verlags zum Ausprobieren - dort können Sie von über einer Million Bücher ohne weitere Kosten auswählen. Das Buch besteht aus Wikipedia-Artikeln: John von Neumann, Theodor Herzl, Paul Erdős, Robert Capa, George Tabori, Antal Doráti, George Szell, Edward Teller, Ferenc Molnár, Ferenc Fricsay, Imre Kertész, George Soros, István Tisza, Felix Salten, Arthur Koestler, Pál Teleki, Árpád Ritter, Michael Curtiz, Paul Hörbiger, Ephraim Kishon, Béla Guttmann, Péter Szondi, Liste der Söhne und Töchter von Budapest, Hans Habe, Karl Mannheim, Milo Dor, János Rácz, Ernő Goldfinger, Pál Bedák, Ferenc Gyurcsek, Gábor Gyepes, József Farkas, Jenő Barcsay, Ervin Lázár, Theodore von Kármán, Georg Solti, Zsa Zsa Gabor, László Cseh, Gábor Kemény, Charles Simonyi, Anna Kéthly, Thomas Szasz, Péter Esterházy, József Bozsik, Ákos Buzsáky, Attila Hörbiger, György Dalos, József Molnár, Éva Besnyő, Ede Király, Dénes Rósa, Marta Eggerth, Gábor Ocskay, Péter Nádas, Károly Pap, János Xántus, István Bujtor, Theophil Funk, Géza Toldi, Márk Rózsavölgyi, András Schiff, Sándor Kocsis, Gotthard B. Schicker, Géza Hofi, István Szabó, János Pilinszky, László Sáry, Ádám Szalai, Mihály Matura, György Faludy, Antal Szerb, Michael Balint, Can Togay, István Örkény, Maximilian Falk, Tivadar Soros, Pál Békés, Ignotus, József Sári, Lajos Koltai, Tom Felleghy, Gábor Bódy, Alfréd Hajós, Paul Czinner, Gábor Szabó, Cornell Capa, André Haynal, Béla Wenckheim, László Márton, Zsuzsa Vathy, Gabor Benedek, Vilmos Schulek, László Tisza, Zoltán Stieber, János Ferencsik, Gábor Demszky, Péter Kovács, Antal Lux, Levente Bozsik, György Cziffra, Agnes Denes, Charles Vidor, Balint Karosi, Iván Sándor, György Kolonics, Tamás Somorjai, László Benedek, El Kazovskij, László Szollás, Emilie Rotter, János Parti, János Starker, György Ránki, Zsolt Bedák, Leó Weiner, Géza Ottlik, Sandro Antal, Farkas Molnár, Zoltá...http://booksllc.net/?l=de&id=57225 ... Read more