Monday, October 09, 2006

Paul Erdos

The latin phrase "Non numerantur, sed ponderantur" mentioned in the previous post was (first?) quoted by Paul Erdos, author of 1475 published articles on mathematics (mass unknown) all considered "substantial" contributions. He was an immensely prolific and famously eccentric mathematician who, with hundreds of collaborators, worked on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory and probability theory.

Some more quotes by him.
  • A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
  • This one's from the Book!
(Said with regard to a particularly beautiful or elegant proof, refering a "book" in which God wrote the proofs for all theorems.)
  • "Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by fighting back."
  • Television is something the Russians invented to destroy American education.

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