The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth

Rating:
Summary: A great read
Review: This is a wonderful book. Hoffman writes a series of vignettes about Paul Erdos, a giant of number theory. Erdos, who died in 1996, was as eccentric as he was brilliant. Though Erdos engaged in few activities outside of mathematics in his adult life, he lived as interesting a life as anyone's, in my opinion. The stories about Erdos and his fellow mathematicians are so entertaining and, in some cases, so genuinely uplifting or poignant, that I have read some of them five times. Also, the quotes and opinions from Erdos himself are very interesting and amusing. His ideas were certainly unconventional, but many of them are very insightful. "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers" does not provide the most systematic account of Erdos's life possible, but in its current format it is more enjoyable.