An “Infinitely Rich” Mathematician Turns 100

At the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Rome, in September of 1973, the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős approached his friend Richard Guy with a request. He said, “Guy, veel you have a coffee?” It cost a dollar, a small fortune to a professor of mathematics at the hinterland University of Calgary who was not much of a coffee drinker. Yet, as Guy later recalled—during a memorial talk following Erdős’s death at age 83 two decades ago—he was curious why the great man had sought him out.

Guy and Erdős were in the Eternal City for an international colloquium on combinatorial theory, so Erdős—who sustained himself with espresso and other stimulants, worked on math problems 19 hours a day, and in his lifetime published in excess of 1,500 papers with more than 500 collaborators—most likely had another problem on the go. When they sat with their coffee, he said, “Guy, you are eenfeeneeteley reech;