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The Man Who Loved Only Numbers {ISBN 1-85702-829-5} is a biography of the famous mathematician Paul Erdős written by Paul Hoffman. It was first published in 1998 as a hardcover edition. A paperback edition appeared in 1999. The book is, in the words of the author, "a work in oral history based on the recollections of Erdős, his collaborators and their spouses". The book was a bestseller in the United Kingdom and has been published in 15 different languages. The book won the 1999 Rhône-Poulenc Prize beating many distinguished and established writers, including Stephen Pinker and E. O. Wilson^[1].

How the book came about

Hoffman received an assignment by The Atlantic Monthly in 1987 to profile Erdős, which won the National Magazine Award for feature writing. After this, Hoffman followed Erdős on his travels for the last 10 years of his life learning about his exceedingly unusual life and interviewing his numerous collaborators in the process of writing this book.

Content

A large part of the book concerns Erdős, but a lot of it is about other mathematicians, past and present, including Ronald Graham, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Srinivasa Ramanujan and G.H. Hardy. In the book Erdős enjoys listening to Hardy when he speaks about Ramanujan. Hoffman also tries to give examples of what mathematics is and why he views it as important, and why many mathematicians such as Erdős devote their whole lives to mathematics. It also contains some history of Europe and the US of Erdős's time.

The book, on the whole, portrays Erdős in a favourable light, pointing out his many endearing qualities, like his childlike simplicity, his generosity and altruistic nature, his kindness and gentleness towards children. However, it also attempts to illustrate his helplessness in doing mundane tasks, the difficulties faced by those close to him because of his eccentricities, and his stubborn and frustrating behaviour.

Writing style

The book is mostly written without much technical detail and can be read by anyone without a mathematical background. Hoffman does give some relatively simple examples of mathematical problems throughout the book (like Cantor diagonalization argument) to illustrate some of the ideas in modern mathematics.

Quotes

• Erdős' motto was not "Other cities, other maidens", but "Another roof, another proof".

Anecdotes

• "Even though Erdős had only three hours of sleep a night, he did take naps throughout the day. But he was doing math even then. I once spent an evening explaining a proof to him. He'd doze off and I'd stop speaking because I thought he wasn't paying attention. As soon as I stopped, he'd raise his head and tell me to continue. This went on all evening. He'd doze, wake up when I paused, doze, wake up...After all that he still understood the proof!" — Ronald Gould, a mathematician at Emory.

References

• Hoffman, Paul (1997). Archimedes' Revenge: The Joys and Perils of Mathematics. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-449-00089-3.  

External links

• Amazon reviews