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N is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős
1993 · Film · documentary · 57 min
Directed by George Paul Csicsery
In an age when genius is a mere commodity, it is useful to look at a person who led a rich life without the traditional trappings of success. A man with no home and no job, Paul Erdös was the most prolific mathematician who ever lived. Born in Hungary in 1913, Erdös wrote and co-authored over 1,500 papers and pioneered several fields in theoretical mathematics. At the age of 83 he still spent most of his time on the road, going from math meeting to math meeting, continually working on problems. He died on September 20, 1996 while attending such a meeting in Warsaw, Poland.
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7 comments on Hacker News
N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdös (1993)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0125425/
How is "N is a number"[0] missing from this list?
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0125425/
N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős is a decent enough documentary about a specific mathematician.
Colors of Math breezes across six contemporary mathematicians.
In the early 90s, George Csicsery made a film about Erdős called "N is a Number" which is worth watching. You can find information on that video, along with a few lectures by Erdős and a film about his 100th birthday at zalafilms.com.
I enjoy watching Csicsery's works. For example, his film "Hard Problems" shows a respect for the IMO competition and its participants that I feel the similar BBC documentary "Beautiful Young Minds" does not.
You likely mean something in the vein of The Theory of Everything or The Imitation Game rather than a straight documentary but just in case documentaries count: it's called N is a Number.
Incidentally, through his appearance in N is a Number, Erdös has a Bacon number of 3.
There is a documentary about his life as well:
N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iflQseSSfA
an interesting and much lighter source of information is the movie/documentary from 1993 called "N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős" though IMDB seems to have it with a short accent :)