Erdös, the man   

“His peculiarities are so numerous it is impossible to describe them all.”     Stanislaw Ulam, 1976

Erdös focused on problem solving, particularly in the areas of number theory, combinatorics and graph theory. During his life he had no property, no family and no fixed address. He buttered his first piece of bread at age 21. He never cooked, nor ever drove a car. Another mathematician, Ron Graham, took care of his daily financial accounting.

He spent 19 hours a day on mathematics, which explains why he needed the coffee. In 1951, he received the American Mathematical Society’s Cole Prize. In 1984, he received $50000 for winning the Wolf Prize. He gave all but $750 of this away to set up scholarships.

Often, he presented mathematical problems to students and attached monetary awards for their solution. This reward could be anything from $5 to $10000, depending on the difficulty of the problem. Living out of a suitcase, he went from country to country and continent to continent considering problems.