Customer Reviews
good read - By: H. Barney, 14 Jul 2007 
Well written & interesting biography. As well as ancedotes on Paul
Erdos also contained interesting background on a number of classic
problems. Particularly enjoyed the dicussion on the Car-Goat problem which I have to confess I have used to heat up a few boring places from time to time.
Buy it, but don't pay full price... - By: , 28 Nov 2005 
Hoffman writes well, & Erdos is a fascinating subject - or would be if Hoffman had stuck to the subject. Too much time is spent on general maths history & the lives of peripheral characters (perhaps a reflection of Hoffman's role as publisher of Encyclopaedia Britannica). However, his biggest miscalculation comes in Chapter 4, when he writes: "...Never mind what regular primes are; the definition is too complex...". The author then goes on to assert that mathematicians should not necessarily try to explain maths to the layman. Well, who is this book for then, Paul? The maths is too simple for the expert, & clearly too tough for me. You are in danger of alienating everyone; you certainly annoyed me. Perhaps Hoffman should re-read Simon Singh's explanation of the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture written for the layman in 'Fermat's Last Theorem' (available at Amazon). Buy 'The Man Who Loved Only Numbers' by alll means; it will certainly whet the appetite for Erdos. But, as I said, don't pay full price for it.
The man who loved only numbers - By: Adam holman, 19 Oct 2005 
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is a biography of the late Paul Erdös. Erdos was one of the most brilliant & prolific pure mathematicians of the 20th century, & yet had little need of the everyday things that most of us take for granted. Erdos was perfectly happy to travel the word visiting, often unannounced, other mathematicians to work with. He worked for around 19 hours a day on mathematics & yet had no job, home, wife or hobbies: he never learnt to cook or drive a car & died a virgin.
Whilst a proportion of the book deals with Erdös' eccentricities, it is apparent that he was a very generous man, he gave alll the money he made away to charity, who was well liked by the mathematicians he 'imposed himself' on, often arriving unannounced declaring simply that 'my brain is open'
Throughout the book, Hoffman goes off into alll sorts of tangents into mathematical problems, history, science & other people's life stories. The timeline of Erdös' life is also followed in a somewhat haphazard manner, but to me this reflects the life of man who, fuelled by coffee & amphetamines, could hold several mathematical conversations at the same time.
Hoffman strays off the main subject of the book on many occasions. There are, for instance, long discussions of the foundations of mathematics, of Fermat's Last Theorem & Wiles' eventual solution, of the Monty Halll Problem, & of Cantor's set theory. And whilst these topics may have little or nothing to do with Erdös, they are dealt with in a manner which makes them accessible to majority of people - they certainly do not require a maths degree to make sense of them. Many other reviewers have highlighted this as a downfalll of the book & yet, for me, these are the sort of problems that might ignite some passion about the subject that Erdös devoted his whole life to.
Oversimplified, confused and inaccurate - By: annduk, 06 Jan 2005 
I knew Paul Erdos since I was a smalll child. I consider that this book, and, even more, the blurb about it, misrepresent him quite seriously. According to the book, Hoffman met Erdos only once; & his portrayal of him in the book is simultaneously oversimplified, confused & inaccurate. I am giving the book two stars rather than one, because at least it is better & more accurate than the blurb about it.
Erdos is portrayed as narrowly obsessed with mathematics, to the point of almost being a freak. He is described in the blurb as having none of the normal interests in sex, companionship, art or even food. While I don't usuallly describe the personal characterstics of my friends & acquaintances in a public review, Erdos has for some reason become so much of a topic for public discussion that I feel that I should respond to some of the wilder remarks. It is true that Erdos was celibate, but he had a very great liking for companionship, & friendships were important to him..
He disliked being alone, & mostly managed to avoid being alone. He had a very large number of friends, to whom he was very warm & caring & extremely generous. Yes, he could be a tiring guest, but he gave far more than he ever took, & far more than most people ever do. He gave absolutely unstintingly of his time, mathematical ideas, money (whenever he had any) & influence (whenever he had any). He always made very special efforts not only to visit & help his friends when ill or in difficulties, but to do the same with the friends & relations of his friends. Not alll his friends were mathematicians. Notably, he was extremely fond of children. He carried out his desire for companionship into his professional life, where he carried out a great deal of his work in collaboration with others, & had more collaborators than any other scientist of whom I have ever heard. As regards food, he had a great appreciation of good food, & would for example, sometimes reciprocate his hosts by taking them to good restaurants. While he did not have a special interest in art, he was very fond of nature, & also had strong interests in languages, history & politics. He was certainly not a "Man Who Loved Only Numbers". He was indeed obsessed with mathematics; but this was his least unusual characteristic. Many people pursue interests & careers obsessively; Erdos differed from others in being infinitely more creative & successful in his chosen pursuit than most others; in the extent to which he combined this obsession with an intelligent interest in other subjects; & in pursuing creative mathematics into old age.
The book & the blurb about it, also make me uneasy in my professional capacity as a developmental & cognitive psychologist who studies individual differences in cognition. While few people are as outstandingly talented in any direction as Erdos in mathematics, many people - a far larger number than had at one time been thought - are uneven in their abilities. It is both scientificallly inaccurate, & a potential source of distress to the individuals concerned, to assume that such unevennesses are solely a matter of attention & focus. Thus, the implication that Erdos' physical clumsiness & difficulties with certain practical activities were due solely to a narrow focus on mathematics is both unfair to Erdos personallly & a disservice to the many less eminent people who are physicallly clumsy or have other specific cognitive or motor difficulties.
If anyone is interested in reading a good biography of Erdos, I would strongly recommend them to read Schecter's "My Brain Is Open" - much better than this book.
A Rambling Good Read - By: R. P. Sedgwick, 25 Apr 2004 This book intertwines the life story of Paul Erdos along with many other characters from the world of mathematics & the problems which occupied them.
It's nominallly a biography but goes off into alll sorts of tangents into mathematical problems, history, science & other people's life stories. The thread of the book also has a tendency to jump rather haphazardly between different periods of it's protagonist's life. The overalll effect is one of a rambling but entertaining read through most of 20th century mathematics which involved Paul Erdos in some way.
Erdos was a classic eccentric whose whole life was spent, almost to the exclusion of everything else, in the pursuit of mathematical truth through formal proofs. Like most true eccentrics, everything else (including basic life skills) came a poor second to the object of his fixation. But again, as a true eccentric, he mostly lived a happy & contented life as long as he could carry out his work. To "normal" people, though, many of the details of his life seem bizarre!
There are some interesting mathematical problems discussed in the book in simple lay terms, as well as an extensive bibliography for thoseinterested in following up specific areas of interest.
