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“My brain is in town”

Paul Erdős was in many ways a mathematician’s mathematician – the most prolific researcher in mathematics in terms of article number, and legendary for the number of his collaborations.

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Paul Erdős was in many ways a mathematician's mathematician - the most prolific researcher in mathematics in terms of article number, and legendary for the number of his collaborations. There is a reason why the best-known measure of collaborative distance is the Erdős number (someone who co-authored a research paper with Erdős has an Erdős number of 1; if the minimum Erdős number of those with whom you yourself have co-authored research papers is n, then your own Erdős number is n+1).

It is said that, whenever Erdős was visiting a city, some mathematician or other would receive a phone call by the great man stating "My brain is in town". More often than not, this would lead to another fruitful collaboration.

I've been a blogger for two of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings (2010 and 2012), and, not surprisingly, I've spent some time thinking about similarities and differences with the Heidelberg Laureate Forum. My tentative conclusion is that a key difference is encapsulated in the Erdős quote. When you invite mathematicians and, to a certain extent, computer scientists, what you get is what has been doing all that exciting work: Their minds.


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Of course top physicists, chemists, biologists and medical researchers need to have first-rate minds as well, but for most of them (some theoreticians excepted) their (or somebody else's) data, laboratory, equipment played a key role in the advances of human knowledge on which their reputation is built. Invite them, and you will only get part of the picture.

With the mathematicians and computer scientists, chances are good that you will get pretty much the whole package. And that, for me, is one of the most exciting aspects of the Heidelberg Laureate Forum. Starting September 22, many interesting brains will be in town.

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This blog post originates from the official blog of the 1st Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) which takes place September 22 - 27, 2013 in Heidelberg, Germany. 40 Abel, Fields, and Turing Laureates will gather to meet a select group of 200 young researchers. Markus Pössel is a member of the HLF blog team. Please find all his postings on the HLF blog.

About Markus Pössel

Markus Pössel is a physicist turned science communicator. He is managing scientist of the Haus der Astronomie in Heidelberg, a center for astronomy education and outreach. The author of several books and numerous articles for a general audience, he has been blogging at Relativ Einfach since 2007, and was one of the bloggers-in-residence at the 2010 Lindau meeting. His main interest is in astronomy and astrophysics, particularly relativity and cosmology. Markus's previous experience includes ten years at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, where he started out as a PhD student and stayed on as an outreach scientist, among other things creating the web portal Einstein Online. In 2007-2008 he served as Senior Science Advisor to the first World Science Festival in New York City before moving to his present position in Heidelberg.

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