Mad Mathematician: Difference between revisions

** Erdős, like many great mathematicians, was a phenomenal amphetamine addict. As any longtime user (mathematician or otherwise) will tell you, speed tweaks your brain.

** <s> Um, no, noooo he wasn't. He had ADHD. And amphetamine is a medicine for ADHD.</s> There is some speculation as to whether or not this is true.

*** According to [[The Other Wiki]], Erdős was bet a sum of money by a fellow mathematician that he couldn't give up the amphetamines for a month. He did, won the bet, and went right back to taking amphetamines, claiming that while he was abstaining, it destroyed his ability to do math ("Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper.").

* Georg Cantor, a little bizarre to begin with, ended up spending much of his last years in sanatoriums - still trying to correlate the various orders of infinity.