Paul Erdős
26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996
Paul Erdős was a Hungarian mathematician and one of the most prolific mathematicians of the 20th century, publishing around 1,500 papers with more than 500 collaborators. He made fundamental contributions to number theory, combinatorics, graph theory, set theory, and probability theory. His itinerant lifestyle and vast collaboration network gave rise to the concept of the Erdős number.
Lived at the same time
Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with Paul Erdős.
- Astrid Lindgren (1907–2002) Overlapped 83 years →
- Bill Hewlett (1913–2001) Overlapped 83 years →
- Cahit Arf (1910–1997) Overlapped 83 years →
- Chien-Shiung Wu (1912–1997) Overlapped 83 years →
- Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004) Overlapped 83 years →
- Dorothy Vaughan (1910–2008) Overlapped 83 years →
Life events
Paul Erdős was born to Jewish parents Anna and Lajos Erdős, both mathematics teachers, in Budapest.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgErdős began university studies in Budapest at age 17 after winning a national examination.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgErdős earned his PhD at age 21 with a thesis on prime numbers written under Lipót Fejér.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgBecause of rising antisemitism in Hungary, Erdős took up a guest position at the University of Manchester.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgErdős emigrated to the United States in 1938, taking a scholarship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgErdős and Atle Selberg developed an elementary proof of the prime number theorem, a landmark result in analytic number theory.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgErdős received the Cole Prize for his papers on number theory, including work related to the prime number theorem.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgErdős received the Wolf Prize for his numerous contributions to number theory, combinatorics, probability, set theory, and mathematical analysis.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgErdős died of a heart attack at age 83 while attending a conference in Warsaw, still mathematically active.
Source: en.wikipedia.org