The Man Who Love Only Numbers is the story of Paul Erdős, a famous, profilic, and extremely eccentric Hungarian mathematician (he called children 'epsilons', women 'bosses', and men 'slaves', for example). In his biography, author Paul Hoffman discusses Erdős' life and foibles, throwing in a good amount of general mathematics discussion along the way.
Erdős' life is interesting, make no mistake- I liked some of the anecdotes shared. Mathematics truly was his life's work, and he often did it for 19 hours a day as he roamed from home to home of famous mathematicians for collaboration (and lodging; Erdős was without a true home, traveling with almost all his possessions in a small suitcase). But here's the problem: this book is a false advertisement. It's only 25% biography of Erdős, and the rest is discussion of mathematics in general (at an accessible level for the laymen, thankfully) and extremely short biographies of many other mathematicians (from the famous- like Euclid or Gauss- to some personal friends of Erdős). For that reason, I was getting frustrated. It felt, in a way, like Bill Bryson's At Home- a book of interesting anecdotes presented in a maddeningly-unstructured, meandering way. Recommended only for extreme devotees to Erdős and his craft.
Rating: C
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