An "Infinitely Rich" Mathematician Turns 100 - Facts So Romantic

At the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Rome, in September of 1973, the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erd?s approached his friend Richard Guy with a request. He said, "Guy, veel you have a coffee?" It cost a dollar, a small fortune to a professor of mathematics at the hinterland University of Calgary who was not much of a coffee drinker. Yet, as Guy later recalled--during a memorial talk following Erd?s's death at age 83 two decades ago--he was curious why the great man had sought him out. Guy and Erd?s were in the Eternal City for an international colloquium on combinatorial theory, so Erd?s--who sustained himself with espresso and other stimulants, worked on math problems 19 hours a day, and in his lifetime published in excess of 1,500 papers with more than 500 collaborators--most likely had another problem on the go.