[HN Gopher] A life that added up to something (Obituary of Paul ...
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       A life that added up to something (Obituary of Paul Erdos)
        
       Author : joebig
       Score  : 53 points
       Date   : 2024-11-10 19:04 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (people.math.osu.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (people.math.osu.edu)
        
       | fn-mote wrote:
       | Needs a year. He died in 1996.
        
       | photochemsyn wrote:
       | "The Music of the Primes" by Marcus du Sautoy (2003), has a great
       | section on the work of of Paul Erdos. eg
       | 
       | > "Erdos, like so many great mathematicians, was lucky to have a
       | father who could expose him to ideas that would stimulate his
       | passion for numbers. On one occasion his father had shown Erdos
       | Euclid's proof that there were infinitely many prime numbers. But
       | Erdos was fascinated when his father twisted Euclid's argument to
       | prove that you could find stretches of numbers of arbitrary
       | length where there were no primes."
       | 
       | (for a stretch of 100 consecutive numbers with no primes,
       | generate n = factorial(101) and then there will be no primes in
       | range(n + 2, n + 102)).
        
       | ptspts wrote:
       | The correct spelling of the name of this mathematician is Pal
       | Erdos. With international first name it is Paul Erdos.
        
         | eesmith wrote:
         | He spelled it Paul, so why would he be incorrect about his own
         | name?
         | 
         | In Hungarian the order would be Erdos Pal -
         | https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_P%C3%A1l .
         | 
         | What's your point? We also say Carl Linnaeus instead of Carl
         | von Linne.
        
           | anikan_vader wrote:
           | The point is that the title and article misspell (in two
           | different ways) his second name.
        
             | sshine wrote:
             | Every time I see Erdos, I think "Oh great, there's that
             | Hungarian umlaut."
             | 
             | And I pronounce his name ['erdo:S], because I've heard
             | that's how you do it.
             | 
             | But it pains me a little.
             | 
             | It pains me because I like to be correct about spelling and
             | pronunciation; I think it is respectful.
             | 
             | But it is also an effort, people don't hear me right and
             | get self-conscious about their own pronunciation.
             | 
             | And I can't easily type Hungarian accents.
             | 
             | It's the kind of name I'd prefer to copy-paste, if I need
             | to be public, and get wrong if I can get away with it.
             | 
             | I'd let anyone off the hook for not correctly typing or
             | pronouncing Hungarian accents in casual conversation.
        
       | thadk wrote:
       | The Man Who Loved Only Numbers (1998) is a favorite read of mine
       | 25 years later.
        
         | jll29 wrote:
         | Reading this obituary, I wonder whether the "Only" in the book
         | title is at all merited if he was so social, collaborative and
         | helpful? - It sounds like he was full of acts of love of
         | others.
        
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       (page generated 2024-11-10 23:00 UTC)