The doorbell rang, and you were surprised to see a colleague on the threshold of his. He was a thin elderly man, excited from amphetamines, sloppy and uninhabited.
He walked past you into the living room, dragging a suitcase with all his property, and announced: “My brain is open.” You did not know how long he was going to stay, because he did not have his own home where he could return. It was expected from you that you would wash his linen and cook food because he did not want to learn to take care of himself. In return, you received sleepless nights in communication with one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. Your involuntary hospitality will most likely lead to the publication of scientific work with your name.
This was the experience of many people in communication with
Erdesh was known as a bad guest. In the book of Hoffman, the mathematician Michael Jacobson tells the story of how Erdesh came to his house, and they were engaged in mathematics until 1 a.m., until Jacobson was tired. Erdesh, who usually worked 19 hours a day, remained awake and at 4:30 in the morning began to make noise in the kitchen to wake the owner. Jacobson, going down in a dressing gown, recalls their meeting: “The first words from his mouth were not ‘good morning’ or ‘how did you sleep?’, but ‘let N be the whole’.”
Erdesh