Paul Erdős facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Paul Erdős
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Born | March 26, 1913 |
Died | September 20, 1996 |
Nationality | ![]() |
Alma mater | University of Pázmány Péter |
Known for | Combinatorics Graph theory Number theory |
Awards | Wolf Prize (1983/84) AMS Cole Prize (1951) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Mathematics |
Institutions | Princeton Purdue Notre Dame Then itinerant |
Doctoral advisor | Leopold Fejér |
Doctoral students | Bonifac Donat Joseph Kruskal Alexander Soifer |
Notes | |
Note that he has an Erdős number of zero.
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Paul Erdős, also Pál Erdős, in English Paul Erdos or Paul Erdös (March 26, 1913 – September 20, 1996), was a famous Hungarian-born mathematician. He worked with hundreds of mathematicians on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory.
Erdős number
Because he wrote so many articles, friends created Erdős number. Erdős has a number of 0 (for being himself), and his direct collaborators were given the number 1. Their collaborators were given a number of 2, an so on.
The Erdős number was most likely first defined by Casper Goffman, a mathematician whose Erdős number is 1.
Images for kids
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Erdős influenced many young mathematicians. In this 1985 photo taken at the University of Adelaide, Erdős explains a problem to Terence Tao—who was 10 years old at the time. Tao received the Fields Medal in 2006, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2007.