The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth by Paul Hoffman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Mathematics is about finding connections, between specific problems and more general results, and between one concept and another seemingly unrelated concept that really is related. "

Yes, I agree. For me, the epigraph gives the best characterizations of mathematics. This is precisely why I love math. I teach mathematics at a university, but I am just an applied mathematician and don't know very much about real math, such as number theory, topology, or abstract algebra. Yet I do love math passionately for the connections it uncovers between seemingly disjoint fields like, say, probability and number theory:

"Erdös, working with Mark Kac, [...] would find a deep connection between a number's roundness and that workhorse of probability theory the bell-shaped curve, or normal distribution."

Yes, I also love math for the exquisite elegance of its constructs and maybe even for the certainties it provides, but connections are first and foremost.

Paul Erdös was one of the most famous mathematicians of the 20th century and one of the most prolific in history. He published 1525 papers, mostly with co-authors. His collaborative working style was notorious. There exists such a thing as Erdös Number: Erdös himself has number 0, mathematicians who co-wrote papers with him have number 1, mathematicians who co-wrote papers with those who have number 1 have number 2, etc. Thanks to my friend in the math department, who published with someone who has number 2, thus getting number 3, I have Erdös number 4 (not very convincingly, though, our paper only tangentially touches math).

I have found Paul Hoffman's The Man Who Loved Only Numbers biography of Paul Erdös an interesting, solid read. I hope that readers who know even less about math than I do will share my opinion. There is a lot in the biography about Paul Erdös himself, about his unconventional behavior, quirks, and eccentricities, like his special words for men, women, children, music, etc. or the fact that "he was twenty-one when he buttered his first piece of bread." The reader will also learn a lot about things that may seem extraneous to the topic - like, for instance, a captivating account of 20th-century history of Hungary, where Paul Erdös comes from (along with von Neumann, Teller, Szilard, Wigner, and several others -- see my review of The Martian's Daughter. A Memoir by Marina von Neumann Whitman.)

While there is a lot in the book about mathematics itself the text should be accessible to most readers, not only people who have connections with math. The long story of Fermat's Last Theorem and Dr. Wiles' proof of it is captivating. Because of my fascination with probability I read the account of the famous story about Monty Hall Problem posed and solved by Marilyn vos Savant in the Parade magazine: several PhD-titled math professors disagreed with her solution and were wrong. I like the general tone of the biography, full of sympathy, admiration, and deep respect for the great mathematician.

Of course the author shows the most beautiful equation in mathematics:

e to the power (pi times i) + 1 = 0

which connects the five most important objects in math - the constants e, pi, 0, 1, and i.

I am really curious whether the non-math readers will appreciate the biography more or less than I do. For me it is not quite a four-star work, but not far from it.

Three-and-a-half stars.

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