Talk:Paul Erdős

Jewish

User:D.Lazard reverted my edit, saying "Unsourced religion (the article says that he was atheist)". When I said that both his parents were Jewish according this article he changed his argument saying now that "Asserting that someone with jewish parents is necessarily jewish is racism". I say there is a whole Category:Jewish atheists and Jewishness is a nationality as well as religion and that it's strange to hide the fact that Erdos was Jewish. Farthermore, this source says that he was "forced to leave Hungary because he was Jewish". By the way, he was also buried in the Jewish cemetery in Budapest. How more Jewish can you be? I'd like having more opinions about that. עמירם פאל (talk) 11:04, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Please don't be ridiculous: anyone who wants to know his religion can find it discussed, and anyone who wants to know his parentage or ancestry can also find it discussed. Both are given appropriate weight in the biography. --JBL (talk) 11:43, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Edit: actually I don't care about the category at all; given the totally absurd content of your comment here I assumed you were trying to add it to the lead. --JBL (talk) 11:45, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

JBL, sorry, but I didn't quite understand, does that mean you're for or against adding the Category:Jewish Hungarian mathematicians to this article? עמירם פאל (talk) 11:54, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

WP:EGRS#General says explicitly that a categorization such as Category:Jewish Hungarian mathematicians must be avoided as "a cross-section of a topic with an ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation". Moreover WP:NONDEF excludes also this categorization. See also WP:OCEGRS and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 May 14#Category:Jewish mathematicians. So Category:Jewish Hungarian mathematicians goes against many standard Wikipedia guidelines. D.Lazard (talk) 13:52, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

@עמירם פאל: Sorry. To clarify: I have no opinion about the category. (Generally, I find the questions of categorization on Wikipedia arcane and tedious, so I don't care to involve myself in them much. Certainly it is true that Erdos was of Jewish ethnicity, Hungarian nationality, and was a mathematician.) --JBL (talk) 02:17, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Drugs

Surprised there is zero on his amphetamine drug abuse which was central to his being so prolific. 2A00:23C7:F486:A00:B56D:F4E1:799F:4221 (talk) 13:45, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

This is covered in three sentences in the section "Personality". --JBL (talk) 14:41, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Why no mention of the Erdos-Bacon number?

It's a little lighthearted, perhaps fun-loving powers that be consider if frivolous, but at the point that both have their own Wikis it seems like it would be worth a sentence.96.240.128.124 (talk) 05:34, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

It's mentioned at Erdős number. There are articles for Bacon number and Erdős–Bacon number. At one time there was an article Erdos-Bacon-Sabbath number, but it was deleted by consensus as being not notable. Erdos-Bacon number has been proposed for deletion several times but has survived. Sundayclose (talk) 14:58, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Sexism?

An editor objected to including, under Erdos's vocabulary: 'Women were "bosses" who "captured" men as "slaves" by marrying them. Divorced men were "liberated".' I think this should stay in. First of all, it's true. Second, lots of folks of his era were sexist, and removing sexist quotes won't help that. Finally, it's a comment on marital dynamics, not math, so there is no reason to assume his is an expert opinion.

Erdos did not appear to be sexist where it counted to him, which is with women in mathematics. Dorothy Stone said:

When I came to the Institute for Advanced Study, as a shy post-graduate student, I expected to be ignored, and that everyone would assume that I had been admitted as a pretty face. My graduate education had been scanty — my advisor had been ill while I was developing my thesis. So I persisted in staying quiet, not wanting to breathe a word about any mathematics I was doing. Paul Erdos absolutely insisted on bringing me out, pulling from me to the work I had done, and discussing it with me. When I had new results, he (and Kakutani) went around to the other mathematicians there...

and among his close collaborators was Vera T. Sós.

Other opinions are of course welcome. LouScheffer (talk) 02:45, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

The issue is this edit. The problem is that in today's culture, such words mark the speaker as a misogynistic buffoon. Unless the source asserts that Erdős was a misogynistic buffoon, it is cherry-picking WP:SYNTH to include that quote which might have been what was an acceptable joke at that time but which now conveys a strong message. Wikipedia is not the place to record quotes to "let the reader decide". Johnuniq (talk) 03:40, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

I agree this comment is now considered misogynistic. However, this quote is not cherry-picking - many other sources about Erdos's vocabulary include this. See this, for example or this. And I think it is correct to "let the reader decide". Wikipedia is an encyclopedia - it is not our place to decide which side of a person to present. LouScheffer (talk) 12:44, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

In an attempt to be more balanced while not being revisionist, I included a reference to his support and encouragement of women mathematicians. LouScheffer (talk) 13:47, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

... in a way that left the section incoherent; I have reverted. JBL (talk) 17:05, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

What is your suggested course of action? LouScheffer (talk) 22:13, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

I am content with the status quo, personally -- the article content seems to appropriately reflect reliable sources. JBL (talk) 20:19, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Institute for Advanced Study

> He was living in America and working at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study at the time.

While the IAS is in Princeton, New Jersey, it is not part of Princeton University. 2600:1700:5438:E10:8E4E:6CF:C39C:4285 (talk) 18:00, 21 July 2023 (UTC)