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Erdös liked to imagine that God had a book in which he wrote down all the most elegant and beautiful mathematical proofs. “That’s one for The Book,” was his greatest praise. The Book supposedly contains brilliant ideas, clever connections and wonderful observations that brought new insight and surprising perspectives on basic and challenging problems from Number Theory, Geometry, Analysis, Combinatorics, and Graph Theory.
His approach to mathematics was as unique as his life. He invented a new kind of art: the art of raising problems. Erdös said that mathematics is eternal because it has an infinity of problems; and in his view, the more elementary a problem is, the better.
Erdös was the consummate problem solver; his hallmark was the succinct and clever argument, often leading to a solution from ‘the Book’. He loved areas of mathematics which did not require an excessive amount of technical knowledge but give scope for ingenuity and surprise.