Spider jerusalem confronts death

January 15th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Spider Jerusalem, faced with impending death:

Mating: curious love

January 15th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

I’m loving Mating, albeit in a slightly guilty way — it tweaks a few of my traits a bit too precisely, with not enough outside-world to make it seem harmless. p. 261-2:

A thing that corrupts N’s worldview is his own demonic energy, whyich is what socalled greatness may in fact reduce to. He’s unnatural. He can work six hours flagstoning or paving, scabs of cement stuck all over hi body, a bite to eat, into the bathing engine, and he’s all set to work late into the night reading and writing and using his abacus.

December 7th, 2010 § 0 comments § permalink

It is hard to exaggerate Mr Erdös’s passion. For 19 hours a day, seven days a week, stimulated by coffee, and later by amphetamines, he worked on mathematics. He might start a game of chess, but would probably doze off until the conversation returned to maths. To find another life this century as intensely devoted to abstraction, one must reach back to Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), who stripped his life bare for philosophy. But whereas Wittgenstein discarded his family fortune as a form of self-torture, Mr Erdös gave away most of the money he earned because he simply did not need it. “Private property is a nuisance,” he would say. And where Wittgenstein was driven by near suicidal compulsions, Mr Erdös simply constructed his life to extract from his magnificent obsession the maximum amount of happiness.

Source; there’s much else on the site.

Also here are personal reminiscences. Fun to think how, in 60 years time or so, we’ll be seeing the deaths of the last mathematicians who worked with him directly. The last people who really knew (i.e. who worked with) the man himself.

Counter-view here

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