Erdos Number

I was talking with some mathematicians the other day about the Erdos Number, and about its namesake, Paul Erdos.

For those of you unfortunate enough not to hand out with mathematicians of your own and pick up stories of their mathematical lore, I will fill you in. Erdos was a Hungarian mathematician (1913 - 1996, Wikipedia), famous for the tremendous number of papers he collaborated on with colleagues.

The concept of the Erdos number is simpole: how many collaborators is someone away from someone who collaborated with Erdos. It's like calculating degrees from Kevin Bacon, only replace movies with academic papers, and actors with mathematicians.

What I didn't know was how interesting of a chracter Erdos was. He spent a large part of his career living out of a suitcase, travelling from university city to university city, staying with colleagues whereever he went. He would arrive at the doorstep of a colleague, announce 'My brain is open', and then get to work.

One thing to note is that Erdos wished to treat mathematics, a field that is often seen as being full of awkward and solitary characters, as a social process. Though there may be times when an individual produces some extraordinary work, most progress in mathetmatics, as in physics and other sciences, comes from discussing and arguing over ideas with others. And isn't that most of the fun of it anyway?