Paul Erdős

Did you know mathematicians have a 'friendship score' called an Erdős number? It comes from Paul Erdős — a real person who made math feel like a giant team game!

Paul Erdős (1913–1996) was a Hungarian mathematician in the 20th century. The most important thing about him: he loved to work with other people. He traveled the world with a small suitcase and turned math into a team sport.

He was incredibly productive: about 1,500 research papers with roughly 500 different coauthors — more teamwork than almost anyone in math history.

He helped grow fields called combinatorics and graph theory and invented clever tricks like the probabilistic method — using chance to prove something exists, like rolling dice many times to show a pattern must appear.

With colleagues he built ideas about random networks (dots and lines), which help us understand connections everywhere. He also started a playful legacy: the Erdős number that measures how close you are, by coauthor links, to him.

Why it matters: his teamwork changed how mathematicians share ideas and solve problems. He inspired generations, offered small prizes for solutions, and made math social, curious, and global.