On a winter\u2019s day in January 1975, two men walked down the sandy stretch of the Marina Beach in Chennai. It was still afternoon, but there was a breeze blowing, and they had the place pretty much to themselves. One was a teenager, a final year BSc student from the city\u2019s Vivekananda College; the other an older, frail-looking foreigner. Initially, the older man asked about some landmarks on that stretch, including the impressive Indo-Saracenic building which houses the University of Madras, but after that the conversation centered on a topic in advanced mathematics \u2013 additive arithmetic functions. Clearly, this man was no ordinary tourist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul Erd\u0151s, the legendary Hungarian\nmathematician, was on his first trip to Chennai, or Madras, as it was called\nthen. At the age of 21, he had earned his PhD from the University of Budapest. This\nwas in 1934. In the next six decades, he would go on to publish over 1500\npapers, an unsurpassed record. He made fundamental contributions to certain\nbranches of mathematics \u2013 number theory, in particular \u2013 and pioneered discrete\nmathematics, the foundation of computer science. A bachelor, he had no\npermanent job or home address. In the pre-Internet era, he connected\nresearchers across the globe who might otherwise have toiled away on problems\non their own, making little headway. His life\u2019s mission to discover, and nurture,\nyoung mathematicians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The young man who discussed additive functions with him on the beach was Alladi Krishnaswami was the son of Alladi Ramakrishnan, founder-director of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (Matscience) in Taramani. Ramakrishnan had invited many Nobel laureates to the southern capital to talk about their work but Erd\u0151s had come mainly to speak to Krishnaswami. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krishnaswami, who is now a professor of\nmathematics at the University of Florida, Gainesville, recalls how he had contacted\nthe nomadic genius in the first place. As a BSc student, working on an\nindependent project on number theory, he had made some discoveries and had come\nup with questions, which no one around him knew the answers to. He spoke to\nmany people in the field in India and abroad. One name came up a lot \u2013 Erd\u0151s, but\nno one knew his exact whereabouts. So, they advised him to write to this expert\nin number theory c\/o The Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Within a month, Erd\u0151s\nwrote back saying that he was going speak at a symposium at the Indian\nStatistical Institute in Calcutta that year — could they meet there? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krishnaswami\u2019s paper had also been accepted\nfor the symposium, but he had his college half-yearly examinations and couldn\u2019t\npossibly travel to Calcutta that week. So, his father, an invited speaker at\nthe symposium, offered to present the paper. Krishnaswami recounts that at the\nend of the presentation, Erd\u0151s, came up to his father and said, \u201cI am very\npleased to meet you, but I\u2019d be much happier to meet your son.\u201d Erd\u0151s was\nleaving for Australia the next week but was happy to re-route that trip via\nMadras. He agreed to give a few lectures at Matscience as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This speaks volumes of his generosity, and his\npassion to encourage young mathematicians, says Krishnaswami. When he went to\nthe airport to receive the visitor, he recalls being nervous but Erd\u0151s broke\nthe ice by reciting a poem about Madras. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erd\u0151s explained that he\u2019d modelled it after the ditty, based on the old families in the New England area. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The home of\nthe bean and the cod<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where the\nLowells speak to the Cabots<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the\nCabots speak only to God.<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Old New England families are collectively known as the \u201cBoston Brahmins.\u201d The stereotype goes that these aristocrats value education from elite universities, appreciate the classical arts, and shun any ostentatious display of wealth. In Madras, Tamil Brahmins (Tam-Brahms) are either Iyers or Iyengars. Worshippers of Shiva, Iyers are known to pray at the temples of Iyengars. Iyengars, however, tend to worship only Vishnu. It is remarkable that Erd\u0151s understood this nuance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the drive to the Matscience campus in Taramani, the conversation flowed. Erd\u0151s, who stayed at the campus guest house, was a light eater. He enjoyed the local dishes with a side of yogurt to cut any hint of spiciness, says Krishnaswami, who was with Erd\u0151s<\/em>\u2019s throughout the trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erd\u0151s also<\/em> met the Governor of Tamil Nadu, K. K.\nShah who was amazed that such a frail-looking man could withstand the rigors of\ninternational travel. Erd\u0151s explained that he wanted to collaborate with local\ntalent everywhere. The minute he heard of the governor\u2019s fund for scholarships\nto high school students who excelled in mathematics, he reached into his pocket\nand pulled out a sheaf of rupee notes \u2013 the amount he was given for lectures in\nMadras \u2013 and donated it to the fund. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before he left, Erd\u0151s<\/em> asked Krishnaswami about his plans for\ngraduate school. Then and there, he wrote him a letter of recommendation to\nUniversity of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Ernst Straus, who had worked with\nAlbert Einstein on relativity, would be his thesis advisor. It was a <\/em>perfect fit, says Krishnaswami. In\nthe fall of \u201875, he started graduate studies with a full fellowship in the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erd\u0151s liked to fund worthy causes, not just math-related ones. On another trip to Chennai, when he heard of mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan\u2019s destitute widow, he wrote her a check. This quirky genius gave away most of his earnings. He never had a chance to meet Ramanujan whose work was an inspiration but read a great deal about India to make up for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another thing Erd\u0151s liked to do was put up\nprize money for problems in mathematics \u2013 the amount varied according to the\nlevel of difficulty. He had few possessions and traveled the world, solving and\nposing research problems with collaborators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mathematicians of the\n20^{th<\/sup> century like to brag about their Erd\u0151s <\/em>number. Every coauthor of Erd\u0151s has the coveted Erd\u0151s\nnumber of 1. Krishnaswami\nhas written five papers with Erd\u0151s, the first of which was based on the topic\nthey discussed that afternoon on the Marina Beach. (That resulted in the Alladi-\nErd\u0151s theorem,\nwhich Krishnaswami says remains a highly cited paper.) Publishing with Erd\u04e7s\u2019s coauthor would give a person an Erd\u0151s number of 2. Ramanujan had\nan Erd\u0151s number of 2. Though they never met, both had co-authored papers with\nthe Cambridge mathematician G. H. Hardy. Einstein has an Erd\u0151s number of 2 via Straus.\nErdos, who was at the center of it all, has an Erd\u0151s number of 0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n}

Today, no one can\nearn an Erd\u0151s number of 1. In 1996, Erd\u0151s died of a heart attack at the age of\n83, when he was attending a conference in Poland. An obituary said that Erd\u0151s had often mused\nabout the perfect death. It would occur just after a lecture, when he had just\nfinished presenting a proof, and a cantankerous member of the audience would\nhave raised a hand to ask, ”What about the general case?\u201d He would have liked\nto respond: ”I think I’ll leave that to the next generation,” and keel over\ndead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ending was not\nso dramatic and Erd\u0151s\u2019s legacy was far\nmore substantial. Through his life and work, he continues to inspire mathematicians\nto find elegant solutions to long-standing puzzles and problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krishnaswami Alladi, who edited his father\u2019s memoir, The Alladi Diary, is currently writing his own memoir entitled “Mathematics: People, Personalities and the Profession” to be published by World Scientific.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul-Erdo\u030bs-in-Madras. pdf.<\/a>Download<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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