Jeff Goldblum should make a movie about this legendary mathematician

I come to you with something a little different for my latest math column – a plea to Hollywood to make a comedy biopic about one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, Paul Erdős.

Why does Erdős (pronounced “air saucer”) deserve such recognition? With nearly 1,500 papers to his name, he is probably the most prolific mathematician who has ever lived, and may ever live. With so many papers, it’s no surprise that he’s known for his work in many areas of mathematics, from probability to number theory to graph theory. Erdős achieved this output through a unique way of working: radical, and some might even say aggressive, collaboration.

Erdős was born in Hungary in 1913 and died – at a mathematics conference of all places – in 1996, but for most of his life he had no fixed abode. With the rise of Nazism in Europe, he left Hungary for the US in 1938, but was denied entry to the US in the 1950s and 1960s because of his ties to communist sympathizers. Instead, he traveled from place to place with a suitcase, appearing at the mathematician’s door and declaring, “My brain is open”. The unspoken deal Erdős offered was that his host would house, feed and generally take care of him for a few days, and in return they would get a chance to work together on some world math.

Much of the tradition surrounding Erdős was laid down in The man who only loved numbersPaul Hoffman’s biography of Erdős, published shortly after the mathematician’s death. I first read it as a teenager and absolutely adored it, but I feel that its potential to reach a much wider audience has been woefully underappreciated, which is why this column marks the start of my official campaign to make it into a movie – starring none other than Jeff Goldblum.

Why Goldblum? On the surface, he and Erdős share a striking resemblance, and of course Goldblum already has one iconic role as a mathematician in the form of Ian Malcom from Jurassic Park franchise. But I think it goes deeper than that – Goldblum’s brand of weird eccentricity fits perfectly with how Erdős lived his life.

Take his approach to religion. Erdős was a self-proclaimed atheist, yet he often referred to God, whom he called the “supreme fascist” or “SF”. He would say that SF owned a book, or rather “The Book”, that contained every possible mathematical theorem, proved in the most elegant way. His mission in life was to recreate the evidence from this powerful tome and steal it from under SF.

Erdős also excelled in sharp turns of phrase. He referred to the children as “epsilons” because of the Greek letter often used in mathematics to denote a small quantity. If an acquaintance was done with math, he said they “died”—those who actually died merely “gone,” in his mind. Another favorite was “Mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems”, although he named this one after his fellow Hungarian mathematician Alfréd Rényi. I can already imagine how this dialogue will come out of Goldblum’s mouth.

Another fun part of the Erdős story already has a Hollywood connection. Because he had so many collaborators, mathematicians like to brag about his “Erdős number”—the number of hops it takes to get to him when you trace paper authorship networks. In other words, people who worked directly with Erdős have an Erdős number of 1, while people who worked with these close associates are 2, and so on. My Erdős number is 3, if I’m cheating a bit – I haven’t written any mathematical papers, but I’ve written a number of papers in which I’ve interviewed and quoted Terence Tao of the University of California, Los Angeles, who has Erdős number 2. That counts, right?

Anyway, it’s strikingly similar to a game called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon that tries to map out the connection between the actors and focuses on the star Relaxed and dozens of other films. If you were in a movie with Bacon, you have Bacon’s number 1 and so on. By the way, Goldblum has a Bacon number 1 because both actors played in the cycling mockumentary called Tour de Pharmacythough I can’t say I’d heard of it before starting this campaign.

A few very special people have bridged these two worlds and hold the coveted Erdős–Bacon number, which is simply the sum of your Erdős and Bacon numbers—you must have both to qualify. They generally include mathematicians who have made cameos in movies or actors who have written a paper at university. The current record for the lowest Erdős–Bacon number is 3, has been operating since 1997 by one of Erdős’ collaborators, the mathematician Daniel Kleitman, who appeared as an extra in Good Will Hunting – whose cast has many close connections with Bacon. But if Goldblum can find a mathematician with an Erdős number of 1 to write a paper with, he could match that record. There’s not much time left, though, because anyone with Erdős’ #1 who is still alive is also getting a bit fired up—the Hungarian mathematician Lajos Pósa, who worked with Erdős as a teenager, is the youngest I’ve found at 78.

I’ve painted a pretty fun picture of Erdős so far, but it’s worth pointing out his flaws as well. Although it is not so described in The man who only loved numbersErdős was clearly sexist, referring to women and men as “bosses” and “slaves”, while to be married one had to be “captured” – although it must be said that he enjoyed working with mathematicians. His habit of showing up unannounced and uninvited wasn’t exactly in line with social norms, and I’m sure there must have been times when a mathematician (or their family) opened the door to the scruffy Erdős and thought, “Argh, not this guy anymore!”.

Another strike against my dream of an Erdős biopic is that it fully relies on the stereotype of mathematicians as the “absentee professor”, and do we really need another story that reinforces such stereotypes and potentially discourages people from enjoying mathematics? I agree with this argument but reject it for two reasons.

The first is that all the major math biopics to date have been serious business – think about it A beautiful mindabout John Nash, or The Man Who Knew Infinitywhich tells the story of Srinivasa Ramanujan (as it happens, it was in my review of the latter that I first raised the idea of ​​Goldblum as Erdős). A comedy about a math biopic has yet to be attempted.

The second is that Erdős has left a legacy of unsolved problems of varying degrees, some of which even come with a monetary reward for solving them. These problems certainly deserve a wider spread among puzzlers, and indeed there is currently a fascinating renaissance in which hobbyists are using AI-powered tools to make real progress in them. Erdős would almost certainly approve of a film that helped spread his gospel further and encouraged people to pick up a pencil (or a chatbot) and continue their eternal battle against the Supreme Fascist in an attempt to decipher the Book. Jeff, if you (or your agent!) are reading this, give me a call – I’m ready and willing to help make it happen.

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