My brain is open: The legend of the genius mathematician Paul Erdős

Author: (USA) Schecter
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-04-01
Features: Edros often downplayed his early aptitude for calculation when discussing it later. Indeed, history is replete with records of mental calculation prodigies, whose remarkable arithmetic skills might make Paul seem mediocre, but whose achievements in other areas were negligible. For example, Gedediah Baxton, a famous calculating expert in the 18th century, could mentally square a 39-digit number, though he did so only occasionally: the task took him two and a half months. Baxton would impress the regulars at local taverns with his arithmetic prowess, who rewarded him with a full pint of beer, and he meticulously recorded these rewards. Paul, of course, had no interest in bar games—he was interested in numbers themselves and how they paired with one another. At the age of three, Paul found these numbers perfectly suited for counting things like days, blocks, or cakes. Mathematicians call these counting numbers positive integers, and this familiar sequence begins with 1, 2, 3 and never ends. Sumerian cuneiform tablets dating back to the first half of the 3rd millennium BCE already show humanity's fascination with positive integers, which would later become Paul's favorite toys. Numbers are everyone's early toys. Cognitive scientists recently discovered that babies' brains are naturally equipped with basic arithmetic abilities. MIT cognitive scientist Steven Pinker wrote in How the Mind Works, "Mathematics is an innate ability." Development is a math teacher. A few weeks after birth, infants can already notice changes in their field of vision, such as objects shifting from two to three. By five months, babies can perform certain simple arithmetic tasks. Psychologist Karen Wynn showed infants a Mickey Mouse doll, placed it behind a screen, and then openly placed a second Mickey Mouse doll behind the screen. When Wynn removed the screen, the children briefly looked in the direction where the first doll had been before losing interest; they had already expected to see two dolls, and when they did, they no longer paid attention. Wynn then repeated the experiment, this time secretly removing one doll before revealing the screen. When she showed the remaining doll, the children stared at it for a considerable amount of time, amazed by Wynn's trick. To appreciate Wynn's trick, the infants must understand that one doll plus one doll equals two dolls. In another slightly modified experiment, Wynn placed two dolls behind the screen and pretended to take away one. When she removed the screen, the children were surprised to see that there were still two dolls there, as they had expected only one to remain. This experiment demonstrated that infants instinctively grasp that 2 minus 1 equals 1. Psychologists have also proven that other mathematical concepts, such as "greater than," "less than," simple counting, arithmetic, and geometry, are almost innate as well. Hunter-gatherer ancestors did not need advanced mathematics to survive, which may explain why the ability to solve differential equations did not become part of human genetic inheritance. This makes Edros'