Erdesh Biography

He also loved black humor and life on suitcases - it helped him brilliantly solve problems, receive bonuses and distribute them to others. For teachers of mathematics, Laias and Anna Erdesh from Budapest, the day of March 26, was supposed to become extremely joyful. But fate made its adjustments. While on this day, Anna gave birth in a boy’s clinic, two small daughters died at the other after another - they failed with Scarlatina.

The tiny floor - and this is what the newborn was called - became the only object of unconditional parental love and the subject of major hopes. He justified them. They were my friends. I knew that they would always be nearby and would not change, ”Paul Erdesh admitted. Already in three years, he easily changed thousands in his mind, and at four discovered the concept of negative numbers for himself and became interested in textbooks in mathematics, medicine and political science.

Wordoderkind entertained his parental acquaintances with mathematical tricks - he asked the date of birth and in the mind calculated the number of seconds lived. But in the company, even an adult, he was infrequent. All the childhood of Erdesh Jr. was left to himself. Even in the early days of World War I went to the front in the early days of the First World War and remained captive in Siberia for up to a year.

In this regard, my mother worked at school overtime - to feed herself and her son. Moreover, being injured by the death of her daughters from Scarlatina, she was panicky that Paul would pick up a deadly disease from classmates, so she kept him at home schooling until high school. All his life, by the way, Erdesh will be afraid of microbes and wash his hands 50 times a day.

Legends go about the gentle relationship of the floor with their mother - one of them, they were so close that they slept in the same bed until he entered the university and she helped him wash and dress when he was already quite adults. Paul became a student at the University of Budapest at the age of 17, like most of his peers. On this, his similarity to them ended - it was a more capable and strange student on the course to look.

The young mathematician published his first scientific article at 18. By the age of 20, he deduced a new proof of the “postulate of Bertrand” - that between any whole number is more than one and the number, twice as large, there is a simple number. This was already proved by the Russian mathematician Paphnutius Chebyshev, but the flooring was easier and shorter.

The ability with incredible ease, as if in passing, to find elegant solutions to the old and new tasks will become one of Erdesh's business cards. He will expect the same decisions from others. For four years at the university, he mastered the entire program and defended his dissertation in mathematics. There was a year, there were the most rainbow scientific prospects ahead.

That's just the Jewish origin and freedom of Erdesh did not combine with the new anti -Semitic rules of existence in the country. So that no one understands their furious “communist” conversations with criticism of the regime, Erdesh and friends came up with a cipher. The Communists were called "guys on a long wave", because the light with the largest wavelength is red.

Their “opposition” could not protect against real problems. Erdesh first went to the University of Manchester in the UK, then at the Institute for Prospecting Princeton. A few years later, the father, uncles and aunts, who remained in the country, died in concentration camps. Only my mother survived - she managed to bury in a secluded place. In Princeton, Erdesh was taken at a modest temporary bet.

But the years later, the scientist recalled that this non -residency period was the most productive in his life. Paul jumped from one region to another. Combinatorics, theory of numbers, the theory of sets, mathematical analysis, the theory of approximations and the theory of probability - he did not see the need to tie himself to one direction. Even behind the party in chess, he could parallel to leaf through the medical encyclopedia, and to the question: “Are you playing?

I prove the theorem! He felt best when he walked like a grandmaster, between several mathematicians working together. He had no professional jealousy at all - he generously shared his assumptions with everyone who could be interested. Erdesh also loved to move in space. Often he appeared on the threshold of the house of one of his colleagues - with a shabby suitcase and an orange plastic bag.

Then Erdesh again became deadly boring, and together with the owner of the house, he decided who to go now. Sometimes states managed to limit the migration of genius. In the year of the United States, suspecting him in communist views, he did not allow him to enter, and Erdesh moved to Israel - there he was accepted for three months by Jewish University in Jerusalem.

Israel offered him citizenship, but Erdesh was not going to abandon the Hungarian and generally considered himself a citizen of the world. During the years of aggravation of the Cold War, he tried to get to Hungary, but then the path was ordered there.

If in the States they were afraid that he was an agent of the USSR, then in a socialist camp he was suspected of espionage in favor of Washington.Since the year, on trips around the world, Erdesh was accompanied by mom. He did not have his family, like at home. He loved to be among people, but even the accidental touch of a stranger was unpleasant for him, and thoughts about intimate pleasures caused vomiting.

When my mother died in the year, Paul fell into severe depression. Soon he already took amphetamines. The floor noticed that they have a pleasant side effect - he had never managed to work so efficiently. Erdesh managed, but then complained that his rash promise delayed the development of mathematics for a month. Immediately after the indicated period, the scientist returned to his beloved doping.

From 10 to 20 milligrams of Benzedrin or Ritalin - this was his norm for 25 years before the end of his life. In addition to amphetamines, Erdesh poured strong coffee daily with liters daily. Not only that - he seized him with caffeine pills. At 60, Erdesh began to call himself a "poor great old man." With every fifth year of his life, he added other descriptions - like “Living Corpse” and “Archaeological Exhibit”.

But his old age did not weigh. Small height, dry, just dressed, gray-haired and with a drug luster in his eyes, he was burning with a search for laconic solutions-to a line or two, no longer. Paul has repeatedly generated interesting mathematical problems, the solution of which was almost immediately - and not through a century, as is often in mathematics. The scientist never had a bank account.

He distributed all the numerous prizes and generous fees for performances for other mathematicians for the proof of his hypotheses - from $ 25 to several thousand, depending on their complexity. His checks were rarely cashed, usually hanging in a frame on a memory wall. One of the most difficult and favorite Erdesh hypotheses - the task of how far you can go on an elevator in an endless mine - proved only in a year.

This was done by the summer mathematician Terens Tao. For his find, he received the dollars laid down by the floor - but not from him. Erdesh slept five hours a day, and the rest of the time was engaged in science. In March, the scientist gave another lecture, but he felt ill right at the board - pressure fell, the pulse slowed to 37 strokes. When several people jumped out for the doctors, Erdesh gathered his strength and whispered: “Just let everyone stay, I have two more tasks here.” The attacks were repeated.

He was put a pacemaker, but this did not solve the problem. In the fall, he, a summer nomad from science, came to Warsaw for another conference. Here on September 20, Paul Erdesh and died of a heart attack. He was buried in a Jewish cemetery in Budapest. At the monument, an epitaph was knocked out by himself: "Finally, I stopped stupid."