Today would’ve been the 100th birthday of the Hungary-born mathematician who published so many papers--and many with such great impact--that a playful measure of one’s academic affiliation with him has been created
By Calla Cofield
I take issue with the celebration of Paul Erdős’ 100th birthday.
Not the celebration itself, but the number. Why 100? The number 100 was chosen, of course, because 10 is the base unit of our number system: We have 10 unique symbols (0-9) that can be combined to represent any conceivable number. Ten units of 10 is 100, so it’s a nice, neat factor. If we used a base 12 system, we would have 12 unique symbols, and we’d be celebrating anniversaries of 144 years. But I can’t find any particular significance about 100 for Erdős.
Erdős was born in 1913 in Hungary to Jewish parents, both mathematics teachers. He moved to Manchester, England, in 1934 for a post-doctoral appointment, but also spent time (unofficially) working in London, Cambridge and Bristol--establishing a trend of bouncing from institute to institute that would continue for the rest of his life. Erdős did not return to Hungary until 1945, after Soviet troops liberated Budapest from the Nazis. Throughout his life he spent time living in the US, Israel and Britain, and visited Hungary often. But he had no permanent residence. He lectured, taught and worked at dozens of universities, but never held a permanent position at any of them. He died in 1996 of a heart attack while attending a conference in Warsaw.
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