Paul Erdos, the most prolific mathematician of all time, defied the conventional wisdom that mathematics was just a young man’s game. For the last 25 years of his life, Erdos raced against the specter of old age to prove as many mathematical theorems as possible. “The first sign of senility, is when a man forgets his theorems. The second sign is when he forgets to zip up. The third sign is when he forgets to zip down.” Erdos never experienced the first sign. He managed to think about more problems than any other mathematician in history and could recite the details of all 1475 of the papers he had written or co-authored. Fortified by espresso and amphetamines, Erdos did mathematics 19 hours a day, 7 days a week. “A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.” When friends urged him to slow down, he always had the same response: “There’ll be plenty of time to rest in the grave.”

i’m currently reading the man who loved only numbers. i dig erdos way of living out of a suitcase, something i aspire to as well. it takes lean production to entirely new levels.

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