The “Gypsy” Existence of a Mathematical Genius

‘The man who made Einstein look normal’

What does mathematics do to a person? I recently came across a tweet (yes I still call it a tweet) of physicist Martin Bauer who said,

“Mathematics is the best way to escape reality”

and it got me thinking — mathematics has a strange effect on a person. It’s like both a refuge and a mirror — it lets you escape reality while simultaneously forcing you to confront something deeper, something more fundamental than everyday life. It strips away the noise of the world and replaces it with a kind of purity, a structure that exists beyond human subjectivity. In this story I want to talk about someone who took math a bit too seriously and to somewhat extreme level.

Paul Erdős, perhaps the most prolific mathematician of the 20th century, lived a life strangely dedicated to mathematics, characterized by a peripatetic lifestyle and constant collaboration. He famously did not have a permanent home or institutional affiliation, but instead constantly wandered from conference to conference and among the homes of his fellow mathematicians. In his book “The Man Who Loved Only Numbers” author Paul Hoffman says,