Welcome to a new course, offered Fall Term 2021 at OLLI.
Required Text
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers:
The Story of Paul Erdös and the Search for Mathematical Truth
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Course Information (from OLLI catalog)
Title
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers (and What He Loved)
Description
Paul Erdös was an itinerant mathematician, traveling the world to do math with top mathematicians, and publishing more than 1500 scholarly papers with more than 500 collaborators. What kinds of math problems did Erdös tackle? What does it mean to “do math”? What is “mathematical truth”? Can you, an interested non-mathematician, understand any of his work? You can. Join us to explore Erdös’s life and work, including some of the most accessible and fascinating problems that held his interest. Main text: The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdös and the Search for Mathematical Truth, by Paul Hoffman (Hatchette Books, 1998).
This is a distance-learning course offered on Zoom.
Course Schedule: Wednesdays, 12:45-2:45 PM, September 15 through November 3, 2021. A makeup class meeting is available if necessary: November 10.
Course Website: https://erdoslovednumbers.blogspot.com
Faculty
Gale Rhodes, a chemist, and Steve Schiffman, a mathematician, had quite different academic careers, but they learned at OLLI that they have at least two things in common: a love of things mathematical, and a burning desire to share their mathematical and scientific interests with people of all backgrounds.
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