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MY BRAIN IS OPEN: The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos Paperback – February 28, 2000

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Bruce Schechter (Author)
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Bruce Schechter (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 45 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Touchstone Edition edition (February 28, 2000)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0684859807
  • ISBN-13: 978-0684859804
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #525,157 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful
Fascinating biography with lucid cameos of math. topics
By norton on March 17, 1999
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This beautiful book is an intellectually rich biography of one of the world's most prolific mathematicians. Amusingly, inoffensively and highly idiosyncratic, Erdos worked on hard problems in apparently simple fields, taking rather easily explained concepts and forging powerful new results and tools with a speed which astounded professional colleagues. Bruce Schechter does a magnificent job of clearly explaining what Erdos did and the many connections between his work and other areas of mathematics and, more generally, science. Through frequent digressions he paints both a humane portrait of a uniquely caring individual and a thumbnail sketch of western political oppression around the world during the first sixty years of this century.
This book also will introduce readers, in a gentle and interesting manner, to the world of numbers and mathematics. The nature of prime numbers and how they are distributed, famous conjectures such as Goldbach's, topics in graph theory and combinatorial mathematics, and more are made accessible to the reader. The account of the controversy surrounding the "elementary" proof of the Prime Number Theorem benefits from the author's access to newly available material, and will be of interest to both laypeople and mathematicians. Other topics, introduced through natural association with the subject at hand, include Godel's Theorem, Russell's paradox, the Monty Hall problem (made famous by Marilyn vos Savant), the nature of infinity, proving theorems by contradiction, and the normal distribution.
Though Erdos is known to many for his unusual life style and behavior, this book does not dwell on the bizarre but weaves such facets of his life into the more exciting mathematical development of the person.Read more ›
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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Comparison to the Hoffman book
By lanoitan on September 22, 2001
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
I read this book after reading the one by Paul Hoffman. I would say that this one by Schechter is a little easier to read, flows better and is better organized. There is a great deal of overlap, but I was glad I read both. I liked reading about the Monty Hall problem and about Erdos' getting water all over in the Hoffman book, but Schechter had the conflict with Selberg in his book, which was meaningful to me. I guess I would recommend reading both.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
The Remarkable Saga of a Remarkable Man
By Henry M. Dobb on June 19, 2002
Format: Paperback
Paul Erdos was a unique individual. He never had a permanent residence; instead, he traveled from one mathematics conference to another with his few earthly belongings in two suitcases, one which held a few changes of clothes, the other a treasure of mathematics papers. He collaborated with mathematicians everywhere; the extent of these collaborations is so immense it gave rise to the Erdos number, which is this: You have an Erdos number of 1 if you co-authored a paper with Erdos, your Erdos number is 2 if you co-authored a paper with someone who jointly wrote a paper with Erdos, etc. About 500 people have an Erdos number of 1 and well over 5000 hold the Erdos number of 2. Erdos numbers go as high as 16 and the number of people with an Erdos number is said to be well above 100,000.
Stories about Erdos abound. It is rumored that he walked into a classroom, saw some writing on a chalkboard and asked if this was mathematics. Upon receiving an affirmative answer, he then asked what the various symbols were. Immediately after the explanations were given, Erdos took chalk in hand and in two lines proved the hypothesis that had baffled other mathematicians for some time, and this was in a field of mathematics that Erdos was largely unfamiliar with! Another story had Erdos taking a train fron Boston to New York; across the aisle sat a beautiful female who said "hello" to him. One thing led to another; by the time the train arrived the two of them had written a paper!
This book covered much of the life and mathematics of Paul Erdos; much of the mathematics in the book is number theory because it is a topic that is easy for anyone to understand yet difficult to prove.Read more ›
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful
This book shows that Erdos loved much more than numbers
By A Customer on November 16, 1998
Format: Hardcover
I liked the other bio of Erdos by Paul Hoffman, "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers," but Schechter's bio presents a fuller picture, showing that Erdos loved a lot more than just numbers. There is a new review of Schechter's book from the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) by a fellow who also reviewed the Hoffman book, and I think he hit the nail on the head when he said that he liked Hoffman's book, "But in many ways, Schechter's is a much better biography. Where Hoffman strayed away from Erdös too often for my taste, Schechter has crafted a much tighter and better focused account of mathematics' famous wayfarer." Why has Hoffman's book gotten more attention? The MAA reviewer says "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers seems to have been carefully released and well promoted -- I became aware of it well before it was published -- whereas Schechter's version just seemed to appear on the bookstore shelves unannounced one day." It's a shame that Schechter's book wasn't promoted more heavily, though the book did reach the Amazon top 50 after it was called "better" than Hoffman's book in the Wall Street Journal. This is the one to buy, in my opinion. Don't let accidents of hype lead you to read the wrong book. "My Brain Is Open" is the better book by far.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Glimpsing a mathematical marvel

Mathematical geniuses are a bizarre lot, to say the least. Erdös certainly is in the forefront of the most eccentric and most colorful. Read more

Published 3 months ago by John Schilke
Five Stars

Wonderful book about an astonishingly intelligent and human person. I also recommend the DVD of the same title.

Published 3 months ago by Hopefully Helpful
Five Stars

Trying to open my brain in Math classes

Published 3 months ago by camille
... other book about Paul Erdos called The Man Who Loved Only Numbers...

There is at least one other book about Paul Erdos called The Man Who Loved Only Numbers and that one is pretty good, but this is even better. Read more

Published 8 months ago by Brenda Brown
LOVE IT!

I love anything written about Paul Erdos. What a brilliant man!

Published 8 months ago by Jean Sasson
Five Stars

A great read about an amazing mathematician and man.

Published 12 months ago by John
The mathematical journeys of Paul Erdos

My Brain Is Open to The mathematical journeys of Paul Erdos

"The meaning of life, Erdos often said, was to prove and conjecture. Read more

Published 17 months ago by Kindle Customer
Erdos is AWESOME

And this book reflects many of his more intimate mathematical desires :D Really nice as bio, plenty of references to the modern mathematics socialite.

Published 22 months ago by Mauro Parra-Miranda
Why were there so many smart Hungarian Jews?

As a mathematician I've heard many of the stories that Schechter tells about Erdős, but what I hadn't heard about was Erdős's youth. Read more

Published on August 11, 2012 by Jordan Bell
The Best of Math Biography

It's a delicate balancing act when writing about genius, either giving way to a gossipy hero-worshiping mysticism or adhering so closely to the technical details that all but the... Read more

Published on December 26, 2011 by Gerald Hawkins

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