![]() ![]() It is often said that if you don't have an Erdös number, you can't count yourself a "good mathematician." It's not true, of course, but a surprisingly high proportion of mathematicians do indeed have an Erdös number, generally no more than 4 or 5. The lower a mathematician's Erdös number, the more important he or she is supposed to be. All those mathematicians who published a paper with someone who has published with Erdös (but have not themselves done so) have Erdös number 2. Anyone who published a paper with Erdös has Erdös number 1. ![]() ![]() In fact, one way that mathematicians like to measure their importance in the field is by calculating their "Erdös number."Įrdös himself has number 0. No one has ever come close to Erdös in terms of collaboration: a total of 485 mathematicians wrote at least one joint paper with him. The majority of those papers were co-authored with one or more others. The second most prodigious author of mathematical papers of all time, at his death he had written 1,475 academic research articles. Paul Erdös died on September 20, 1996, at the age of eighty-three. ![]()
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