Remembering Paul Erdős
نویسنده
چکیده
The last time I saw Paul Erdős was in May 1995, during the Conference on Analytic Theory held in Urbana, Ill. in honour of H. Halberstam. It was a beautiful spring day, and we were walking (slowly, as Erdős had some trouble with his foot) in the park of Allerton Conference Center, where the meeting took place. At one point Erdős turned to me and said: ”You know, it is said that that those who prove the prime number theorem will live forever. Well, Hadamard and de la Vallée–Poussin both lived to be almost a hundred. Now Selberg and I had also to do something with the prime number theorem, so...”. The unfinished sentence hung in the air, full of understatement concerning his (and Selberg’s) rôle in the proof of the prime number theorem. I don’t remember now my exact reply, but the essence of it was that I told him he will live anyway through the myriad of his results.
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