Biography of Erdos (and the necessity of reading it ;-)

[Subbarao Kambhampati <rao@asu.edu>]

The following is perhaps a bit on the proselytizing side and is not 
all that needed to pass this course.


I was surprised today that none of you have heard of Erdos.

Here is a very nice book on the life of Paul Erdos--the itenerant 
Hungarian number theoretician:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0786863625/103-3806394-5554230?v=glance&n=283155&v=glance

(a short bio on wikipedia is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdos )

This is a great biography of a recent mathematician.

Another really beautifully written one is: "The Man who knew 
Infinity"--a biography of Ramanujan by Robert Kanigel:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671750615/103-3806394-5554230?v=glance&n=283155&%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance

(short one at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramanujan )

An elegant but biting and opinionated mathematical memoir is that of 
Hardy-- "A mathematician's apology"

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521427061/103-3806394-5554230?v=glance&n=283155&%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance

The foreword by C.P. Snow is also very readable. Hardy also figures 
prominently in Ramanujan's life.

..finally, I love the following quotes on the necessity of wider 
awareness of scientific biographies:

"Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still 
largely a history of boneheads:
ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leader, compulsive 
voyagers, ignorant generals--
the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically 
altered history--the great
creative scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned--if at all."

                                           --Martin Gardner (Who 
used to write the mathematical recreations column in Scientific American)

"In the index to the six hundred odd pages of Arnold Toynbee's A 
Study of History, abridged version,
 the names of Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes and Newton *do not 
occur*... yet their cosmi quest destroyed
the medieval vision of an immutable social order in a walled-in 
universe and transformed the
European landscape, society, culture, habits and general outlook, as 
thoroughly as if a
new species had arisen on this planet."
                                          ---Arthur Koestler

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Rao