Video lecture recorded in 2000. An introduction to the life and style of the amazing Paul Erdös, who for more than six decades lived out of two suitcases, criss-crossing the globe chasing mathematical problems. Paul Hoffman describes the life of Erdös in an intimate and entertaining glimpse into the global world of mathematics.
Paul Hoffman won the 1999 Aventis Prize for Science Books for The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, his biography of the mathematician Paul Erdös.
Erdös was unusual not only intellectually but also in the way he lived, forsaking all creature comforts - including a home - to pursue his lifelong study of numbers. Remembered as a charming yet impish philosopher-scientist, for more than six decades Erdös lived out of two tattered suitcases, criss-crossing four continents at a frenzied pace, chasing mathematical problems.
In his lecture, Paul Hoffman introduces us to the genius of Erdös, and to some of the other remarkable mathematical minds he encountered along the way, in an intimate and entertaining glimpse into the global world of mathematics.