This is a haunting and fascinating biography of Paul Erdös. He was a Hungarian mathematician with an incredible output... he was interested in almost nothing else but mathematics. He moved from place to place staying with other mathematicians, payed little attention to money matters, and constantly proposed new problems to solve. He was so prolific in publishing papers (often with other authors) that there is an in-joke in Mathematics based on what is called your “Erdös number”. If you published with Erdös you get a status number of “1”. If you published with someone who published with Erdös you get a status number of “2” and so on.
Despite a number of idiosyncrasies, he was generous with his ideas and money, and was very kind to children (who he called “epsilons”). While this book does try to introduce the reader to some of his interests, including number theory and probability, it is not overloaded with technical matters. Erdös died in 1996 having published more papers than any other mathematician. This book is a warm hearted introduction to someone who lived life with a single focus, and “outsider” who contributed richly to his field and who invited collaboration with his peers.
It is a suitable read for Senior School and above. Indeed there is nothing in it to concern younger readers, except for his use (or abuse) of tablets later in his life to stay awake as much as possible (to do more Mathematics).
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