How long does it take to read The Man Who Loved Only Numbers?
Paul Hoffman
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers by Paul Hoffman takes about 5 hours 40 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 40 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1998. 309 pages, about 84,975 words.
12 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 9 hours 27 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 40 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 32 minutes |
The page count is the median across 11 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
"Paul Erdos, the most prolific and eccentric mathematician of our time, forsook all creature comforts - including a hometo pursue his lifelong study of numbers. He was a man who possessed unimaginable powers of thought yet was unable to manage some of the simplest daily tasks." "For more than six decades, Erdos lived out of two tattered suitcases, crisscrossing four continents at a frenzied pace, chasing mathematical problems and fresh talent. Erdos saw mathematics as a search for lasting beauty and ultimate truth. It was a search Erdos never abandoned, even as his life was torn asunder by some of the major political dramas of our time." "In this biography, Hoffman uses Erdos's life and work to introduce readers to a cast of remarkable geniuses, from Archimedes to Stanislaw Ulam, one of the chief minds behind the Los Alamos nuclear project. He draws on years of interviews with Ronald Graham and Fan Chung, Erdos's chief American caretakers and devoted collaborators. With an eye for the hilarious anecdote, Hoffman explains mathematical problems from Fermat's Last Theorem to the more frivolous "Monty Hall dilemma." What emerges is an intimate look at the world of mathematics and an indelible portrait of Erdos, a charming and impish philosopher-scientist whose accomplishments continue to enrich and inform our world."--Jacket.
Subjects: Mathematicians, Biography, Mathématiciens, Wiskundigen, Biographies, Biographie
