In an age when genius is just a commodity, it’s useful to look at someone who lived a life of affluence without the traditional markers of success.
Paul Erdös, a homeless and unemployed man, was the most prolific mathematician of all time. Born in Hungary in 1913, Erdös authored and co-authored more than 1,500 articles and pioneered several fields of theoretical mathematics. At the age of 83, he is still on the road most of the time, going from one mathematics club to another, constantly doing problems. He died on 20 September 1996 while attending such a conference in Warsaw, Poland.
The film begins in 1991, when Erdös received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University, an award he was happy to exchange for “brave new evidence”. For Ordos, the meaning of life is “proof and speculation”.
The structure of N is a number based on Ordos’ 50-year permanent migration, “like a bumblebee,” passing news and mathematical information from one university to another. Erdos established himself as a serious mathematician at the age of 20, when he produced a more elegant proof of Chebyshev’s theorem, that there is always a prime number between every number and its even number .
N is a Number is a 16mm documentary filmed in four countries over a four-year period between 1988 and 1991. The film was produced, directed and edited by Giorgio Paolo Sicielli. Camera design by John Knoop, original music by Mark Adler.
Directed by: George Paul Csicsery
