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A life that added up to something (Obituary of Paul Erdòs)

Charles Krauthammer Washington Post Writers Group WASHINGTON - One of the most extraordinary minds of our time has "left." "Left" is the word Paul Erdos, a prodigiously gifted and productive mathematician, used for "died." "Died" is the word he used to signify "stopped doing math." Erdos never died. He continued doing math, notoriously a young person's field, right until the day he died Friday, Sept.

He seemed sentenced to a life of solitariness from birth, on the day of which his two sisters, age 3 and 5, died of scarlet fever, leaving him an only child, doted upon and kept at home by a fretful mother. Andrew Wiles, for example, recently achieved fame for having solved math's Holy Grail, Fermat's Last Theorem - alter having worked on it for seven years in his attic! A few years ago, Graham tells me, Erdos heard of a promising young mathematician who wanted to go to Harvard but was short the money needed.

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