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Erdős number
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(Definition)
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The shortest number of collaborations with other mathematicians through which a particular mathematician can be connected to Paul Erdos is the Erdos number of that mathematician. For example, N. J. A. Sloane coauthored Sphere Packings, Lattices and Groups with John Horton Conway. In turn, Conway coauthored a paper with Erdos in 1979, thus Sloane's Erdos number is 2. Since Erdos died in 1996, 2 is the lowest Erdos number a mathematician working today can achieve.
One way to visualize the Erdos number is by drawing up a collaboration graph $G$ whose vertex set consists of all persons, where two vertices $x$ and $y$ are connected by an edge if and only if $x$ and $y$ have a joint publication. Then the Erdos number of a person $x$ is the distance in $G$ (possibly infinity) of $x$ from Erdos.
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"Erdős number" is owned by Mravinci. [ owner history (1) ]
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Cross-references: infinity, distance, edge, vertex, graph, John Horton Conway, groups, sphere, connected, number
There are 44 references to this entry.
This is version 4 of Erdős number, born on 2006-09-18, modified 2006-09-19.
Object id is 8376, canonical name is ErdHosNumber.
Accessed 3867 times total.
Classification:
| AMS MSC: | 01A60 (History and biography :: History of mathematics and mathematicians :: 20th century) | | | 01A61 (History and biography :: History of mathematics and mathematicians :: Twenty-first century) |
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Pending Errata and Addenda
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