Paul Erdös and His Mathematics

Since his death in 1996, many scientific meetings have been dedicated to the memory of Paul Erdös. From July 4 to 11, 1999, the conference "Paul Erdös and his Mathematics" was held in Budapest, with the ambitious goal of showing the whole range of Erdös' work - a difficult task in view of Erdös' versatility and his broad scope of interest in mathematics. According to this goal, the topics of lectures, given by the leading specialists of the subjects, included number theory, combinatorics, analysis, set theory, probability, geometry and areas connecting them, like ergodic theory. The conference has contributed to changing the common view that Erdös worked only in combinatorics and combinatorial number theory. In the present two volumes, the editors have collected, besides some personal reminiscences by Paul's old friends, mainly survey articles on his work, and on areas he initiated or worked in.

From the reviews: "These two books are indeed a beautiful collection of interesting papers related to the work of P. Erdös … . these many excellent papers contain a wealth of material, in the many areas in which P. Erdös worked. It is a real pleasure to read through these papers … to have an idea of the many beautiful and elegant theorems in combinatorics, number theory, geometry … . In my opinion this is a book which deserves a place in each university library." (J.A. Thas, Bulletin of the Belgian Mathematical Society, Vol. 12 (1), 2005) "An organizing committee of the János Bolyai Mathematical Society was formed to undertake the ambitious task of holding a conference on ‘Paul Erdös and His Mathematics’ … . The contributions fall into essentially three categories: personal reminiscences by old friends, survey papers … and current development on various topics related to his work. The papers … are well written and make very interesting reading. … Perhaps the frequently used sentence ‘every mathematics library should have these items’ cannot be more appropriate than here." (P. Shiu, The Mathematical Gazette, Vol. 88 (512), 2004) "Erdös was a phenomenon. … In order to celebrate his life, the Hungarian János Bolyas Mathematical Society organised a conference in Budapest in July 1999. … The conference material is published in the two volume set ‘Paul Erdös and His Mathematics’. … the book should be in every library and should be in the possession of every academic to lend to every honours and graduate student." (Derek Holton, The Australian Mathematical Society Gazette, Vol. 30 (3), 2003)