freaking_out
Saddam's new life
tell us what u ended up buying.
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Maths books. (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter ND
- Start date
I went down today; the book stores didn't have much at all (although i was tempted to buy "Mathematics and Sex"), so i took your suggestion and went to the library. I got "Mathematics: The New Golden Age", which is very mathematical, and "The penguin book of curious and interesting mathematics", which is less mathematical, but is full blurbs relating to maths. Here's an anecdote i think drbuchanan will enjoy:Originally posted by freaking_out
tell us what u ended up buying.
"G. H. Hardy was about to return from Denmark to England, by boat, in appalling weather. So he sent a postcard ahead to announce to the world that 'I have proved Riemann's Hypothesis', which was then as now the Holy Grail of professional mathematicians. Hardy reasoned that God (in whom Hardy did not profess to believe) would not allow the boat to sink, thereby leaving open the suspicion that Hardy had achieved this remarkable feat."
evilc
I am a fish
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- 2002
this is pretty interesting, i got this from Dr Karl's page on the triple j website, it is also in his newest book:
Paul Erds was one of the greatest, most prolific and most original mathematicians of all time. He slept for only three hours a night, did mathematics seven days a week 19 hours a day until he died at the age of 83 - and he believed that a mathematician was a device for turning coffee into mathematical theorems.
He loved only mathematics. He once said, "I cannot stand sexual pleasure. It's peculiar". He didn't care about property, food, clothes, or paying taxes. He never learnt how to cook food, or take care of himself. His only possessions were some old clothes in a half-filled suitcase. His fellow mathematicians would take care of his physical needs, and he would bless them with the fruits of his brain.
He would suddenly turn up at the front door of one his fellow mathematicians in any of 25 countries, and announce that he was ready to do maths by saying, "My brain is open". He would stay for up to a month, until he had exhausted his host. Erds would fuel his brain with coffee, caffeine tablets and Benzedrine. The two of them would work until 1.30 AM, when the host would stumble, exhausted, off to bed. Four hours later, the host would be woken by the enquiry "Anna, do you exist?" which was Erds' way of asking if she was awake. Then, without waiting for an answer, Erds would immediately launch into "Let n be an integer and k be a set such that...". On another occasion, he burst into a Christmas party and button-holed his host with "Merry Christmas. Let f of n be the following function...".
Even so, the mathematicians loved to be invaded, because of the exhilarating time they had with Paul while they danced together through the land of mathematics. While sailors might have the motto of "a wife in every port", Erds had the motto of "Another roof, another proof". He refused to slow down, saying "there'll be plenty of time to rest in the grave".
His social skills were non-existent. He couldn't even shut doors or windows. On one occasion, his hosts had left a window open for him so that he could climb into the house when he arrived a little after midnight.
Later that morning, still before the sun had come up, it rained very heavily and water began flooding the ground floor of the house. Erds woke his friends and said, "It's raining in the window. You'd better do something."
He was born in 1913 in Hungary. Both of his parents taught mathematics. He was a child prodigy, and invented negative numbers for himself at the age of 4, when he subtracted 250 degrees from 100 degrees, coming up with a temperature of 150 below zero. He had to leave Hungary in the 1930s, because the prejudice against Jews was so great. He began wandering the world looking for mathematical problems to solve. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, writing about 1,500 papers. He was skilled in many areas of mathematics, and founded the field of Discrete Mathematics, which is the very foundation of computer science.
And he collaborated with more mathematicians than any other person in history. You've probably heard of the Kevin Bacon game, where you try to link the actor Kevin Bacon to any other actor in a few steps. Well, mathematicians like to show off by saying how close they were to writing a paper with Erds - they quote their Erds number.
Erds himself had Erds number Zero. There are some 500 mathematicians who have Erds Number One - they directly wrote a paper with Erds. There are about 5,600 mathematicians with Erds Number Two. They wrote a paper with somebody who had co-written a paper with Erds. 63 Nobel Prize winners have Erds numbers less than nine, while all of the winners of the prestigious Fields Mathematics Medal have Erds numbers less than six.
Albert Einstein has an Erds number of two, while the famous baseball player Henry L. "Hank" Aaron has an Erds number of one - both he and Erds co-autographed the same baseball when they were both getting honorary degrees from Emory University in 1995.
Erds was an incredibly generous man. When he won the $50,000 Wolf Mathematics Prize in 1984, he kept only $720 for himself - the rest of it he gave away, mostly to encourage young people in mathematics.
His mother used to stay, "Paul, even someone as busy as you, can never be in two places at the same time". Paul Erds died in Poland in 1996. Possibly he is now hanging out with all the great mathematicians of the past, and he can be in many places at the same time - crunching big numbers and solving some really cosmic equations.
Paul Erds was one of the greatest, most prolific and most original mathematicians of all time. He slept for only three hours a night, did mathematics seven days a week 19 hours a day until he died at the age of 83 - and he believed that a mathematician was a device for turning coffee into mathematical theorems.
He loved only mathematics. He once said, "I cannot stand sexual pleasure. It's peculiar". He didn't care about property, food, clothes, or paying taxes. He never learnt how to cook food, or take care of himself. His only possessions were some old clothes in a half-filled suitcase. His fellow mathematicians would take care of his physical needs, and he would bless them with the fruits of his brain.
He would suddenly turn up at the front door of one his fellow mathematicians in any of 25 countries, and announce that he was ready to do maths by saying, "My brain is open". He would stay for up to a month, until he had exhausted his host. Erds would fuel his brain with coffee, caffeine tablets and Benzedrine. The two of them would work until 1.30 AM, when the host would stumble, exhausted, off to bed. Four hours later, the host would be woken by the enquiry "Anna, do you exist?" which was Erds' way of asking if she was awake. Then, without waiting for an answer, Erds would immediately launch into "Let n be an integer and k be a set such that...". On another occasion, he burst into a Christmas party and button-holed his host with "Merry Christmas. Let f of n be the following function...".
Even so, the mathematicians loved to be invaded, because of the exhilarating time they had with Paul while they danced together through the land of mathematics. While sailors might have the motto of "a wife in every port", Erds had the motto of "Another roof, another proof". He refused to slow down, saying "there'll be plenty of time to rest in the grave".
His social skills were non-existent. He couldn't even shut doors or windows. On one occasion, his hosts had left a window open for him so that he could climb into the house when he arrived a little after midnight.
Later that morning, still before the sun had come up, it rained very heavily and water began flooding the ground floor of the house. Erds woke his friends and said, "It's raining in the window. You'd better do something."
He was born in 1913 in Hungary. Both of his parents taught mathematics. He was a child prodigy, and invented negative numbers for himself at the age of 4, when he subtracted 250 degrees from 100 degrees, coming up with a temperature of 150 below zero. He had to leave Hungary in the 1930s, because the prejudice against Jews was so great. He began wandering the world looking for mathematical problems to solve. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, writing about 1,500 papers. He was skilled in many areas of mathematics, and founded the field of Discrete Mathematics, which is the very foundation of computer science.
And he collaborated with more mathematicians than any other person in history. You've probably heard of the Kevin Bacon game, where you try to link the actor Kevin Bacon to any other actor in a few steps. Well, mathematicians like to show off by saying how close they were to writing a paper with Erds - they quote their Erds number.
Erds himself had Erds number Zero. There are some 500 mathematicians who have Erds Number One - they directly wrote a paper with Erds. There are about 5,600 mathematicians with Erds Number Two. They wrote a paper with somebody who had co-written a paper with Erds. 63 Nobel Prize winners have Erds numbers less than nine, while all of the winners of the prestigious Fields Mathematics Medal have Erds numbers less than six.
Albert Einstein has an Erds number of two, while the famous baseball player Henry L. "Hank" Aaron has an Erds number of one - both he and Erds co-autographed the same baseball when they were both getting honorary degrees from Emory University in 1995.
Erds was an incredibly generous man. When he won the $50,000 Wolf Mathematics Prize in 1984, he kept only $720 for himself - the rest of it he gave away, mostly to encourage young people in mathematics.
His mother used to stay, "Paul, even someone as busy as you, can never be in two places at the same time". Paul Erds died in Poland in 1996. Possibly he is now hanging out with all the great mathematicians of the past, and he can be in many places at the same time - crunching big numbers and solving some really cosmic equations.
turtle_2468
Member
Hmm, yes. I can't get away from Cleo Cresswell... her image haunts me (yes, she works at UNSW)... argh!