The Man Who Loved Only Numbers
Front cover
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| Author | Paul Hoffman |
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| Original title | The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdös and the Search for Mathematical Truth |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Biography |
| Published | July 15, 1998 |
| Publisher | Hyperion Books |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 301 pp. |
| ISBN | |
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is a biography of the famous mathematician Paul Erdős written by Paul Hoffman. The book was first published on July 15, 1998, by Hyperion Books as a hardcover edition. A paperback edition appeared in 1999. The book is, in the words of the author, "a work in oral history based on the recollections of Erdős, his collaborators and their spouses". The book was a bestseller in the United Kingdom and has been published in 15 different languages. The book won the 1999 Rhône-Poulenc Prize beating many distinguished and established writers, including Steven Pinker and E. O. Wilson.
Hoffman received an assignment by The Atlantic Monthly in 1987 to profile Erdős, which won the National Magazine Award for feature writing. After this, Hoffman followed Erdős on his travels for the last 10 years of his life learning about his exceedingly unusual life and interviewing his numerous collaborators in the process of writing this book.
A large part of the book concerns Erdős, but a lot of it is about other mathematicians, past and present, including Ronald Graham, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Srinivasa Ramanujan, and G.H. Hardy. In the book, Erdős enjoys listening to Hardy when he speaks about Ramanujan. Hoffman also tries to give examples of what mathematics is and why he views it as important, and why many mathematicians such as Erdős devote their whole lives to mathematics. It also contains some history of Europe and the United States of Erdős's time.
The book, on the whole, portrays Erdős in a favourable light, pointing out his many endearing qualities, like his childlike simplicity, his generosity and altruistic nature, his kindness and gentleness towards children. However, it also attempts to illustrate his helplessness in doing mundane tasks, the difficulties faced by those close to him because of his eccentricities, and his stubborn and frustrating behaviour.
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