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Estimados colegas:

Aqui esta algo que me chegou por uma lista de discussao estrangeira e que
penso que sera de interesse para muitos de vos.
Joao Pedro


>******************************************************
>By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
>
>WASHINGTON--One of the most extraordinary minds of our time has "left." "Left"
>is the word Paul Erdos, a prodigiously gifted and productive mathematician,
>used for "died." "Died" is the word he used to signify "stopped doing math."
>Erdos never "died." He continued doing math, notoriously a young person's
>field, right until the day he died Friday, September 20. He was 83.
>
>It wasn't just his vocabulary that was eccentric. Erdos' whole life was so
>improbable no novelist could have invented him (though he was chronicled
>beautifully by Paul Hoffman in the November 1987 Atlantic Monthly).
>
>He had no home, no family, no possessions, no address. He went from math
>conference to math conference, from university to university, knocking on the
>doors of mathematicians throughout the world, declaring "My brain is open" and
>moving in. His colleagues, grateful for a few days collaboration with
>Erdos--his mathematical breadth was as impressive as his depth--took him in.
>
>Erdos traveled with two suitcases, each half-full. One had a few clothes; the
>other, mathematical papers. He owned nothing else. Nothing. His friends took
>care of the affairs of everyday life for him--checkbook, tax returns, food. He
>did numbers.
>
>He seemed sentenced to a life of solitariness from birth, on the day of which
>his two sisters, age 3 and 5, died of scarlet fever, leaving him an only
>child, doted upon and kept at home by a fretful mother. Hitler disposed of
>nearly all the rest of his Hungarian Jewish family. And Erdos never married.
>His Washington Post obituary ends with this abrupt and rather painful line:
>"He leaves no immediate survivors."
>
>But in reality he did: hundreds of scientific collaborators and 1,500
>mathematical papers produced with them. An astonishing legacy in a field where
>a lifetime product of 50 papers is considered quite extraordinary.
>
>Mathematicians tend to bloom early and die early. The great Indian genius,
>Srinivasa Ramanujan, died at 32. The great French mathematician, Evariste
>Galois died at 21. (In a duel. The night before, it is said, he stayed up all
>night writing down everything he knew. Premonition?) And those who don't
>literally die young, die young in Erdos' sense. By 30, they've lost it.
>
>Erdos didn't. He began his work early. At 20 he discovered a proof for a
>classic theorem of number theory (that between any number and its double must
>lie a prime, i.e., indivisible, number). He remained fecund till his death.
>Indeed, his friend and benefactor, Dr. (of math, of course) Ron Graham,
>estimates that perhaps 50 new Erdos papers are still to appear, reflecting
>work he and collaborators were doing at the time of his death.
>
>Erdos was unusual in yet one other respect. The notion of the itinerant,
>eccentric genius, totally absorbed in his own world of thought, is a cliche
>that almost always attaches to the adjective "anti-social." From Bobby Fischer
>to Howard Hughes, obsession and misanthropy seem to go together.
>
>Not so Erdos. He was gentle, open and generous with others. He believed in
>making mathematics a social activity. Indeed, he was the most prolifically
>collaborative mathematician in history. Hundreds of colleagues who have
>published with him or been advised by him can trace some breakthrough or
>insight to an evening with Erdos, brain open.
>
>That sociability sets him apart from other mathematical geniuses. Andrew
>Wiles, for example, recently achieved fame for having solved math's Holy
>Grail, Fermat's Last Theorem--after having worked on it for seven years in his
>attic! He then sprang the proof on the world as a surprise.
>
>Erdos didn't just share his genius. He shared his money. It seems comical to
>say so because he had so little. But, in fact, it is rather touching. He had
>so little because he gave away everything he earned. He was a soft touch for
>whatever charitable or hard luck cause came his way. In India, he once gave
>away the proceeds from a few lectures he had delivered there to Ramanujan's
>impoverished widow.
>
>A few years ago, Graham tells me, Erdos heard of a promising young
>mathematician who wanted to go to Harvard but was short the money needed.
>Erdos arranged to see him and lent him $1,000. (The sum total of the money
>Erdos carried around at any one time was about $30.) He told the young man he
>could pay it back when he was able to. Recently, the young man called Graham
>to say that he had gone through Harvard and was now teaching at Michigan and
>could finally pay the money back. What should he do?
>
>Graham consulted Erdos. Erdos said, "Tell him to do with the $1,000 what I
>did."
>
>No survivors, indeed. (c) 1996, Washington Post Writers Group
>
>

*************************************************
Joao Pedro da Ponte
Dep Educacao-Fac Ciencias-Univ Lisboa
Edificio C1-Campo Grande
1700 LISBOA-PORTUGAL

fax office  (351-1)-750-0082
tel. office (351-1)-757-3141 ext 1103/2012/2522
tel. home   (351-1)-363-0861
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Caro Joao 
Obrigada pela mensagem acerca do Erdos que fizaste o favor de enviar. Da 
gosto saber que ainda ha gente como esta no mundo da Matematica, numa 
altura em que tinha chegado a conclusao que o mundo academico parece 
estar bem perto do inferno. 

Quanto a tua mensagem acerca da formacao de professores, porque nao 
arranjar um debate. Ja tenho muito que fazer, mas surgiu-me agora a ideia 
de arranjar, aqui no Porto, um encontro para debater ideias como essa.
Que tal estas de disponibilidade de tempo?
Um abraco
Candida

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