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Erdős-Bacon number (Definition)

The Erdos-Bacon number of a mathematician or an actor is the sum of their Erdos number and their Bacon number. Not many professional mathematicians have had film rôles. However, a few important ones have done consulting work for Hollywood films about mathematicians, such as A Beautiful Mind. For example, William Timothy Gowers, who has Erdos number 4, was a consultant for Proof, with Gwyneth Paltrow in the lead rôle. Paltrow was in se7en with Endre Hules, who was in Apollo 13 with Kevin Bacon. Thus Gowers has an Erdos-Bacon number of 7. Daniel Kleitman, consultant for Good Will Hunting, has an even smaller Erdos-Bacon number, 3, since he co-authored a paper with Erdos and the film included Minnie Driver, who starred with Bacon in Sleepers. The smallest likely Erdos-Bacon number would probably be 2, if an Erdos co-author consulted for a movie starring Bacon. It's also possible that Kevin Bacon could co-author a mathematical paper with an Erdos co-author, but this appears unlikely.




"Erdős-Bacon number" is owned by PrimeFan. [ full author list (2) ]
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See Also: Bacon number

Other names:  Bacon-Erdős number, Erdos-Bacon number, Bacon-Erdos number
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Cross-references: proof, William Timothy Gowers, Bacon number, sum, number

This is version 2 of Erdős-Bacon number, born on 2007-07-28, modified 2007-07-30.
Object id is 9815, canonical name is ErdHosBaconNumber.
Accessed 2863 times total.

Classification:
AMS MSC01A60 (History and biography :: History of mathematics and mathematicians :: 20th century)
 01A61 (History and biography :: History of mathematics and mathematicians :: Twenty-first century)
 01A65 (History and biography :: History of mathematics and mathematicians :: Contemporary)

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