- The Erdös Number Project
- Some Famous People with Finite Erdös Numbers
- Information about the Erdös Number Project
- The Erdös Number Project Data Files
- Facts about Erdös Numbers and the Collaboration Graph
- Some Famous People with Finite Erdös Numbers
- Computing Your Erdös Number
- Research on Collaboration in Research
- Information about Paul Erdös (1913–1996)
- Publications of Paul Erdös
- Items of Interest Related to Erdös Numbers
The Erdös Number Project
Mathematics and Science Center, Room 346
146 Library Drive
Rochester,
MI
48309-4479
(location map)
Some Famous People with Finite Erdös Numbers
Return to Erdös Number Project home page.
Many famous people have small Erdös numbers. Wikipedia has a list of people by Erdös number, with links to their pages.
The tables below shows upper bounds on the Erdös numbers of some famous scientists and mathematicians, including many Nobel laureates. Further details, including the paths that establish some of these numbers and many other people, can be found in Famous Trail to Paul Erdös by Rodrigo De Castro and Jerrold W. Grossman, available here in preprint form — in LATeX (118K), postscript (419K, 35 pages), and pdf (453K, 35 pages). It appears (somewhat abbreviated) in The Mathematical Intelligencer: vol. 21, no. 3 (Summer 1999), 51–63, and (in Spanish and updated) in the journal of the Colombian Academy of Sciences (Revista de la Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales, vol. 23, no. 89 (December, 1999), 563–582). Some of the data shown here comes from Chris Fields’ Erdős number page.
In addition, we have listed on a separate page the collaboration paths from Erdös to most of the winners of the Fields Medal, the Nevanlinna Prize, the Abel Prize, the Wolf Prize in Mathematics, and the Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement, as well as a few others.
Perhaps the most famous contemporary mathematician, Andrew Wiles, was too old to receive a Fields Medal (but was given a special tribute at the 1998 International Congress of Mathematicians). He has an Erdös number of at most 3, via Erdös to ANDREW ODLYZKO to Chris M. Skinner.
And surely the most famous contemporary "computer personality" with a small Erdös number is William H. (Bill) Gates, who published with Christos H. Papadimitriou in 1979, who published with Xiao Tie Deng, who published with Erdös coauthor PAVOL HELL, giving Gates Erdös number at most 4.
A prolific biologist, Eugene V. Koonin, at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, has an Erdös number of 2, through Laszlo A. Szekely. This gives many biologists small finite Erdös numbers, as well. (Another link to the biological sciences community is geneticist Eric Lander, who has Erdös number 2, via Dan Kleitman.) Indeed, it is probably possible to connect almost everyone who has published in the biological sciences to Erdös. With a couple of hours work on the Web, Grossman was able to establish an upper bound of 9 for the Erdös number of his brother, a practicing physician, who was a coauthor on a biology paper resulting from a summer internship. As Margaret Wilson at the University of California points out, the same is probably true for the fields of linguistics (via Noam Chomsky) and psychology (via Jean Piaget).
Here is a message from another biologist, Bruce Kristal, who has Erdös number 2 and lots of coauthors, which may provide useful hints for other searchers in this area: “I recently published with D Frank Hsu (Erdös number 1), and I am writing to briefly point out some potential implications of this that Frank and I found very interesting. Specifically, I am a biologist who works across several areas. Because of this, I have published with, among others, major figures in research on AIDS, aging, neurologic injury and neurodegeneration, and nutritional epidemiology. I believe that one of the neuroscientists I have published with, M. F. Beal, is among the most highly cited in this area. In the last area, nutritional epidemiology, I am on one (position) paper with many of the world leaders, including Walter Willett. Walt has over 1000 publications and was recently named as the most highly cited biomedical researcher in the last decade. Likewise, Frank is a computer scientist with ties in both mathematics and information retrieval as well as some biology citations. I mention these because Frank and I have discussed, among other issues, whether I may serve as a ‘weak link’ of sufficient breadth to impact the overall network structure both within biology and between biology and these other areas of math and computer science. Koonin is clearly more prolific than I am, but our fields may be sufficiently different to complement.” Interested people can contact him directly.
Chris Fields has an interesting paper in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics discussing collaboration in the Human Genome Project, which gives small Erdös numbers to many biologists. For pre-prints of other papers describing co-authorship paths from Nobel laureates to Erdős, see Chris Fields’ Erdős number page. Dr. Fields provided many entries for Nobel laureates listed on this page.
For other links in the neuroscience area (and clinical medicine), see Jonathan Victor’s Erdös number page. For a nice discussion of Erdös numbers in physics, see Barbecue Joe Marasco’s Erdös number page. The philosophers' web shows influential relationships in that field.
A person on the Erdös2 list, Kenneth Hodges, turned from mathematics to a totally different field. He was Associate Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma and has at least two English literature collaborators, whose Erdös numbers are therefore 3. Similarly, John Cameron Urschel, a professional football player with the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League (before his retirement), who majored in mathematics at Penn State, has Erdös number 4; he is currently working on his PhD in mathematics. In an earlier era, Frank Beall Ryan, a professional football player with the Cleveland Browns and other teams, has a PhD in mathematics and boasts an Erdös number of 3. On the other hand, the unabomber, Theodore John Kaczynski, who published six research papers in mathematics, including several in prestigious journals of the American Mathematical Society, has no coauthors and therefore no finite Erdös number.
Another link into the humanities goes through Roger Herz-Fischler, who has Erdös number 2. He has joint publications with geographer HelenJane Armstrong, classicist Lenard Curchin, and French literature and art history scholar Eliane Herz-Fischler.
Felipe Voloch found what seems to be the oldest mathematicican known to have a finite Erdös number, Richard Dedekind (1831–1916). His number is at most 7, via this path: H. Weber – W. Jacobsthal – R. Fuchs – L.Hopf – A. Einstein – E. Straus – P. Erdös. Some of these collaborations might not meet the usual standard for mathematical research, however (education-oriented works or handbooks). On the other hand, there is a clear path of length 4 to David Hilbert (1862–1943), via R. Courant – K. Friedrichs – H. N. Shapiro – P. Erdös; and a path of length 3 to Georg Frobenius (1849–1917), via I. Schur – G. Szegö – P. Erdös.
Lou Scheffer contributed the following comment: “If you count Supreme Court opinions as joint research, then President Taft has a finite Erdös number. I personally think Supreme Court opinions should count. It only reaches the supreme court if the matter in question is not settled, so it’s research. And it’s definitely joint research, since they argue and they write up the results in a publically available joint publication. Whether they concur or dissent is irrelevant, I think, since they are still doing joint research on the same problem, with the same publication. So here is at least one chain leading to the Supreme Court. I found these with Google Scholar. A. E. Roth is the Nobel prize winner in economics with an Erdös number of 3. It crosses into the legal domain with Posner, Erdös number 4: A. E. Roth – R. A. Posner – L. Epstein – J. L. Spaeth – A. L. Kalleberg – B. F. Reskin – D. J. Merritt – R. B. Ginsburg, giving Ginsburg a number of at most 10. Once you reach the Supreme Court, the chain goes to President Taft, who was a Supreme Court justice after being President, via (Google case law search): R. B. Ginsburg – W. Rehnquist – W. O. Douglas – Harlan Stone – William Howard Taft, giving Taft a number of at most 14. Since Supreme Court justices often serve a long time, and overlap with many colleagues, I suspect they all have finite numbers. Without detailed checking, this probably leads to the earliest born justice, William Cushing, born March 1, 1732, having a finite Erdös number. Since joint publications were otherwise uncommon at that time, he is the oldest person I’ve seen suggested for this.”
We would like to acknowledge and thank the dozens of other people, too numerous to mention by name, who have written in with suggestions, additions, and corrections to these lists. We would appreciate further help from anybody with relevant information.
Nobel Prize winners
NAME YEAR SUBJECT ERDÖS NUMBER
Antoine Henri Becquerel 1903 Physics 5
Pierre Curie 1903 Physics 8
Marie Curie 1903 Physics 7
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes 1913 Physics 4
Max von Laue 1914 Physics 4
William Henry Bragg 1915 Physics 7
William Lawrence Bragg 1915 Physics 6
Albert Einstein 1921 Physics 2
Arthur Holly Compton 1927 Physics 4
Niels Bohr 1922 Physics 4
Louis de Broglie 1929 Physics 5
Werner Heisenberg 1932 Physics 4
Paul A. Dirac 1933 Physics 4
Erwin Schrödinger 1933 Physics 4
James Chadwick 1935 Physics 5
Enrico Fermi 1938 Physics 3
Ernest O. Lawrence 1939 Physics 6
Otto Stern 1943 Physics 3
Isidor I. Rabi 1944 Physics 4
Wolfgang Pauli 1945 Physics 3
Sir John Douglas Cockcroft 1951 Physics 6
Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton 1951 Physics 7
Felix Bloch 1952 Physics 5
Edward Mills Purcell 1952 Physics 4
Frits Zernike 1953 Physics 4
Max Born 1954 Physics 3
Walltlher Bothe 1954 Physics 8
Willis Eugene Lamb, Jr. 1955 Physics 3
Polykarp Kusch 1955 Physics 5
John Bardeen 1956 Physics 5
Walter Houser Brattain 1956 Physics 6
William B. Shockley 1956 Physics 5
Chen Ning Yang 1957 Physics 4
Tsung-dao Lee 1957 Physics 5
Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov 1958 Physics 8
Il'Ja Mikhailovich Frank 1958 Physics 7
Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm 1958 Physics 8
Owen Chamberlain 1959 Physics 5
Emilio Gino Segre 1959 Physics 4
Donald A. Glaser 1960 Physics 5
Robert Hofstadter 1961 Physics 5
Rudolf Ludwig Mossbauer 1961 Physics 5
Lev Davidovich Landau 1962 Physics 5
Maria Goeppert-Mayer 1963 Physics 4
J. Hans D. Jensen 1963 Physics 5
Eugene P. Wigner 1963 Physics 3
Nicolay Gennadiyevich Basov 1964 Physics 7
Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokharov 1964 Physics 6
Charles H. Townes 1964 Physics 6
Richard P. Feynman 1965 Physics 3
Julian S. Schwinger 1965 Physics 4
Sin-Itiro Tomonaga 1965 Physics 5
Alfred Kastler 1966 Physics 7
Hans Albrecht Bethe 1967 Physics 3
Luis W. Alvarez 1968 Physics 5
Murray Gell-Mann 1969 Physics 3
Hannes Alfven 1970 Physics 5
Louis Neel 1970 Physics 5
Dennis Gabor 1971 Physics 5
John Bardeen 1972 Physics 5
Leon N. Cooper 1972 Physics 5
John R. Schrieffer 1972 Physics 4
Leo Esaki 1973 Physics 9
Ivar Giaever 1973 Physics 7
Brian D. Josephson 1973 Physics 7
Antony Hewish 1974 Physics 8
Sir Martin Ryle 1974 Physics 9
Aage Bohr 1975 Physics 5
Ben Mottelson 1975 Physics 5
James Rainwater 1975 Physics 4
Burton Richter 1976 Physics 6
Samuel C. C. Ting 1976 Physics 5
Philip W. Anderson 1977 Physics 5
Sir Nevill F. Mott 1977 Physics 6
John H. Van Vleck 1977 Physics 5
Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa 1978 Physics 5
Arno A. Penzias 1978 Physics 7
Robert W. Wilson 1978 Physics 7
Sheldon Lee Glashow 1979 Physics 2
Abdus Salam 1979 Physics 3
Steven Weinberg 1979 Physics 3
James W. Cronin 1980 Physics 6
Val L. Fitch 1980 Physics 5
Nicolaas Bloembergen 1981 Physics 9
Arthur L. Schawlow 1981 Physics 5
Kai M. Siegbahn 1981 Physics 8
Kenneth G. Wilson 1982 Physics 6
Subramanyan Chandrasekhar 1983 Physics 4
William A. Fowler 1983 Physics 5
Carlo Rubbia 1984 Physics 5
Simon Van Der Meer 1984 Physics 6
Klaus von Klitzing 1985 Physics 5
Gerd Binnig 1986 Physics 6
Heinrich Rohrer 1986 Physics 7
Ernst Ruska 1986 Physics 8
J. Georg Bednorz 1987 Physics 10
K. Alexander Muller 1987 Physics 9
Leon M. Lederman 1988 Physics 6
Melvin Schwartz 1988 Physics 7
Jack Steinberger 1988 Physics 5
Hans G. Dehmelt 1989 Physics 7
Wolfgang Paul 1989 Physics 8
Norman F. Ramsey 1989 Physics 3
Jerome I. Friedman 1990 Physics 5
Henry W. Kendall 1990 Physics 5
Richard E. Taylor 1990 Physics 5
Pierre-Gilles De Gennes 1991 Physics 6
Georges Charpak 1992 Physics 3
Russell A. Hulse 1993 Physics 5
Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr. 1993 Physics 4
Bertram N. Brockhouse 1994 Physics 8
Clifford G. Shull 1994 Physics 6
Martin L, Perl 1995 Physics 5
Frederick Reines 1995 Physics 5
David M. Lee 1996 Physics 6
Douglas D. Osheroff 1996 Physics 5
Robert C. Richardson 1996 Physics 6
Steven Chu 1997 Physics 6
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji 1997 Physics 4
William D. Phillips 1997 Physics 5
Robert B. Laughlin 1998 Physics 5
Horst L. Stormer 1998 Physics 7
Daniel C. Tsui 1998 Physics 7
Gerardus ’t Hooft 1999 Physics 6
Martinus J.G. Veltman 1999 Physics 7
Zhores I. Alferov 2000 Physics 9
Jack St. Clair Kilby 2000 Physics 12
Herbert Kroemer 2000 Physics 9
Eric A. Cornell 2001 Physics 7
Wolfgang Ketterle 2001 Physics 8
Carl E. Wieman 2001 Physics 5
Raymond Davis, Jr. 2002 Physics 5
Riccardo Giacconi 2002 Physics 8
Masatoshi Koshiba 2002 Physics 9
Alexei A. Abrikosov 2003 Physics 6
Vitaly L. Ginzburg 2003 Physics 6
Anthony J. Leggett 2003 Physics 7
David J. Gross 2004 Physics 4
H. David Politzer 2004 Physics 3
Frank Wilczek 2004 Physics 3
Roy J. Glauber 2005 Physics 3
John L. Hall 2005 Physics 7
Theodor W. Hansch 2005 Physics 5
John C. Mather 2006 Physics 6
George C. Smoot 2006 Physics 5
Albert Fret 2007 Physics 8
Peter Grunberg 2007 Physics 8
Makoto Kobayashi 2008 Physics ?
Toshihide Maskawa 2008 Physics ?
Yoichiro Nambu 2008 Physics 5
Willard S. Boyle 2009 Physics 5
Charles K. Kao 2009 Physics ?
George E. Smith 2009 Physics 9
Andre K. Geim 2010 Physics 6
Konstantin Novoselov 2010 Physics 6
Saul Perlmutter 2011 Physics 5
Adam G. Riess 2011 Physics 5
Brian P. Schmidt 2011 Physics 6
Serge Haroche 2012 Physics 3
David Wineland 2012 Physics 3
Francois Englert 2013 Physics 7
Peter W. Higgs 2013 Physics 9
Paul A. Samuelson 1970 Economics 5
Kenneth J. Arrow 1972 Economics 3
Leonid Vitalevich Kantorovich 1975 Economics 2
Tjalling C. Koopmans 1975 Economics 4
Milton Friedman 1976 Economics 3
Herbert A. Simon 1978 Economics 3
James Tobin 1981 Economics 7
Gerard Debreu 1983 Economics 3
Franco Modigliani 1985 Economics 4
Robert M. Solow 1987 Economics 4
Harry M. Markowitz 1990 Economics 2
Merton H. Miller 1990 Economics 4
John C. Harsanyi 1994 Economics 8
John F. Nash 1994 Economics 4
Reinhard Selten 1994 Economics 5
James Mirrlees 1996 Economics 3
William S. Vickrey 1996 Economics 5
Robert C. Merton 1997 Economics 6
Amartya Sen 1998 Economics 4
James J. Heckman 2000 Economics 4
George A. Akerlof 2001 Economics 5
Joseph Stiglitz 2001 Economics 4
Daniel Kahneman 2002 Economics 3
Vernon L. Smith 2002 Economics 4
Robert F. Engle, III 2003 Economics 4
Clive William John Granger 2003 Economics 4
Fynn E. Kydland 2004 Economics 6
Robert J. Aumann 2005 Economics 3
Edmund S. Phelps 2006 Economics 4
Leonid Hurwicz 2007 Economics 3
Eric S. Maskin 2007 Economics 2
Roger B. Myerson 2007 Economics 3
Elinor Ostrom 2009 Economics 5
Dale T. Mortensen 2010 Economics 5
Thomas J. Sargent 2011 Economics 5
Christopher A. Sims 2011 Economics 5
Alvin E. Roth 2012 Economics 3
Lloyd S. Shapley 2012 Economics 3
Lars Peter Hansen 2013 Economics 4
Eugene F. Fama 2013 Economics 5
Robert J. Shiller 2013 Economics 7
Jean Tirole 2014 Economics 3
Angus Deaton 2015 Economics 5
Ernest Rutherford 1908 Chemistry 5
Marie Curie 1911 Chemistry 7
Harold C. Urey 1934 Chemistry 5
Peter J. Debye 1936 Chemistry 5
George De Hevesy 1943 Chemistry 7
Otto Hahn 1944 Chemistry 7
Otto Diels 1950 Chemistry 7
Kurt Alder 1950 Chemistry 6
Edwin M. McMillan 1951 Chemistry 3
Glenn T. Seaborg 1951 Chemistry 4
Linus Pauling* 1954 Chemistry 4
*Also received the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize
John C. Kendrew 1962 Chemistry 7
Max F. Perutz 1962 Chemistry 7
Robert B. Woodward 1965 Chemistry 7
Lars Onsager 1968 Chemistry 3
Ilya Prigogine 1977 Chemistry 6
Walter Gilbert 1980 Chemistry 4
Kenichi Fukui 1981 Chemistry 3
Roald Hoffmann 1981 Chemistry 6
Robert Bruce Merrifield 1984 Chemistry 6
Herbert A. Hauptman 1985 Chemistry 3
Jerome Karle 1985 Chemistry 4
Dudley R. Herschbach 1986 Chemistry 9
Yuan T. Lee 1986 Chemistry 5
John C. Polanyi 1986 Chemistry 7
Jean-Marie Lehn 1987 Chemistry 5
Hartmut Michel 1988 Chemistry 4
Johann Deisenhofer 1988 Chemistry 5
Thomas R. Cech 1989 Chemistry 4
Rudolph A. Marcus 1992 Chemistry 4
Kary B. Mullis 1993 Chemistry 5
George A. Olah 1994 Chemistry 7
Robert F. Curl, Jr. 1996 Chemistry 5
Harold W. Kroto 1996 Chemistry 4
Richard E. Smalley 1996 Chemistry 5
Walter Kohn 1998 Chemistry 3
John A. Pople 1998 Chemistry 5
Ahmed H. Zewail 1999 Chemistry 9
Alan J. Heeger 2000 Chemistry 5
Alan G. MacDiarmid 2000 Chemistry 6
Hideki Shirakawa 2000 Chemistry 6
Martin Chalfie 2008 Chemistry 4
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan 2009 Chemistry 6
Thomas A. Steitz 2009 Chemistry 5
Ada Yonath 2009 Chemistry 6
Martin Karplus 2013 Chemistry 5
Yoachim Frank 2017 Chemistry 6
Richard Henderson 2017 Chemistry 6
Joshua Lederberg 1958 Medicine* 5
Edward Tatum 1958 Medicine* 11
Georg von Bekesy 1961 Medicine* 12
Francis H. C. Crick 1962 Medicine* 4
James D. Watson 1962 Medicine* 4
Sir John Carew Eccles 1963 Medicine* 3
Max Delbrück 1969 Medicine* 7
David Baltimore 1975 Medicine* 5
Daniel Carleton Gajdusek 1976 Medicine* 4
Daniel Nathans 1978 Medicine* 4
Hamilton O. Smith 1978 Medicine* 3
Sususmu Tonegawa 1987 Medicine* 5
Harold E. Varmus 1989 Medicine* 4
Erwin Neher 1991 Medicine* 7
Bert Sakmann 1991 Medicine* 6
Edmond H. Fischer 1992 Medicine* 7
Edwin G. Krebs 1992 Medicine* 6
Richard J. Roberts 1993 Medicine* 4
Phillip A. Sharp 1993 Medicine* 5
Alfred G. Gilman 1994 Medicine* 4
Martin Rodbell 1994 Medicine* 7
Edward B. Lewis 1995 Medicine* 5
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard 1995 Medicine* 4
Eric F. Wieschaus 1995 Medicine* 5
Peter C. Doherty 1996 Medicine* 6
Rolf M. Zinkernagel 1996 Medicine* 6
Stanley B. Prusiner 1997 Medicine* 5
Robert F. Furchgott 1998 Medicine* 9
Louis J. Ignarro 1998 Medicine* 10
Ferid Murad 1998 Medicine* 8
Günter Blobel 1999 Medicine* 5
Arvid Carlsson 2000 Medicine* 9
Paul Greegard 2000 Medicine* 5
Eric R. Kandel 2000 Medicine* 4
Leland H. Hartwell 2001 Medicine* 4
Tim Hunt 2001 Medicine* 4
Sir Paul M. Nurse 2001 Medicine* 4
Sydney Brenner 2002 Medicine* 4
H. Robert Horvitz 2002 Medicine* 4
John E. Sulston 2002 Medicine* 3
Paul C. Lauterbur 2003 Medicine* 8
Sir Peter Mansfield 2003 Medicine* 9
Richard Axel 2004 Medicine* 3
Linda B. Buck 2004 Medicine* 4
Barry J. Marshall 2005 Medicine* 6
J. Robert Warren 2005 Medicine* 7
Andrew Z. Fire 2006 Medicine* 4
Craig C. Mello 2006 Medicine* 5
Mario R. Capecchi 2007 Medicine* 4
Sir Martin J. Evans 2007 Medicine* 5
Oliver Smithies 2007 Medicine* 5
Françoise Barré-Sinoussi 2008 Medicine* 6
Luc Montagnier 2008 Medicine* 5
Harald zur Hausen 2008 Medicine* 5
Elizabeth H. Blackburn 2009 Medicine* 6
Carol W. Greider 2009 Medicine* 6
Jack W. Szostak 2009 Medicine* 5
Robert G. Edwards 2010 Medicine* 5
*or Physiology
Fields Medal winners
NAME YEAR COUNTRY ERDÖS NUMBER
Lars Ahlfors 1936 Finland 4
Jesse Douglas 1936 USA 4
Laurent Schwartz 1950 France 4
Atle Selberg 1950 Norway 2
Kunihiko Kodaira 1954 Japan 2
Jean-Pierre Serre 1954 France 2
Klaus Roth 1958 Germany 2
Rene Thom 1958 France 4
Lars Hormander 1962 Sweden 3
John Willard Milnor 1962 USA 3
Michael Atiyah 1966 Great Britain 4
Paul Cohen 1966 USA 5
Alexander Grothendieck 1966 Germany/France 5
Stephen Smale 1966 USA 4
Alan Baker 1970 Great Britain 2
Heisuke Hironaka 1970 Japan 4
Serge Novikov 1970 USSR 3
John G. Thompson 1970 USA 3
Enrico Bombieri 1974 Italy 2
David Mumford 1974 Great Britain 2
Pierre Deligne 1978 Belgium 3
Charles Fefferman 1978 USA 2
Gregory Margulis 1978 USSR 3
Daniel Quillen 1978 USA 3
Alain Connes 1982 France 3
William Thurston 1982 USA 2
Shing-Tung Yau 1982 China 2
Simon K. Donaldson 1986 Great Britain 4
Gerd Faltings 1986 Germany 4
Michael Freedman 1986 USA 3
Valdimir Drinfeld 1990 USSR 4
Vaughan Jones 1990 New Zealand 4
Shigemufi Mori 1990 Japan 3
Edward Witten 1990 USA 3
Pierre-Louis Lions 1994 France 4
Jean Christophe Yoccoz 1994 France 3
Jean Bourgain 1994 Belgium 2
Efim Zelmanov 1994 Russia 3
Richard Borcherds 1998 S Afr/Gt Brtn 2
William T. Gowers 1998 Great Britain 4
Maxim L. Kontsevich 1998 Russia 4
Curtis McMullen 1998 USA 3
Laurent Lafforgue 2002 France 5
Vladimir A. Voevodsky 2002 Russia/USA 4
Andrei Okounkov 2006 Russia/USA 3
Grigory Perelman(refused) 2006 Russia 4
Terence C. Tao 2006 Australia/USA 2
Wendelin Werner 2006 Germany/France 3
Ngo Bao Chau 2010 Vietnam 4
Elon Lindenstrauss 2010 Israel 3
Stanislav Smirnov 2010 Russia 3
Cedric Villani 2010 France 3
Artur Avila 2014 Brazil/France 3
Manjul Bhargava 2014 Canada/USA 2
Martin Hairer 2014 Austria/Gt Brtn 4
Maryam Mirzakhani 2014 Iran/USA 3
Caucher Birkar 2018 Iran/Gt Brtn 4
Alessio Figalli 2018 Italy 3
Peter Scholze 2018 Germany 4
Akshay Venkatesh 2018 Australia 3
Nevanlinna Prize winners
NAME YEAR COUNTRY ERDÖS NUMBER
Robert Tarjan 1982 USA 2
Leslie Valiant 1986 Hungary/Gt Brtn 3
Alexander Razborov 1990 Russia 2
Avi Wigderson 1994 Israel 2
Peter Shor 1998 USA 2
Madhu Sudan 2002 India/USA 2
Jon Kleinberg 2006 USA 3
Daniel Spielman 2010 USA 3
Subhash Khot 2014 India/USA 3
Constantinos Daskalakis 2018 Greece 3
Abel Prize winners
NAME YEAR COUNTRY ERDÖS NUMBER
Jean-Pierre Serre 2003 France 2
Michael Atiyah 2004 Great Britain 4
Isadore M. Singer 2004 USA 3
Peter D. Lax 2005 Hungary/USA 3
Lennart Carleson 2006 Sweden 2
Srinivasa S. R. Varadhan 2007 India/USA 2
John G. Thompson 2008 USA 3
Jacques Tits 2008 Belgium 4
Mikhael Gromov 2009 Russia 3
John T. Tate 2010 USA 3
John Willard Milnor 2011 USA 3
Endre Szemeredi 2012 Hungary/USA 1
Pierre Deligne 2013 Belgium 3
Yakov G. Sinai 2014 Russia 4
John F. Nash 2015 USA 4
Louis Nirenberg 2015 Canada/USA 3
Andrew Wiles 2016 Great Britain 3
Yves Meyer 2017 France 2
Robert Langlands 2018 Canada/USA 2
Karen Uhlenbeck 2019 USA 3
Wolf Prize in Mathematics winners
NAME YEAR COUNTRY ERDÖS NUMBER
Izrail M. Gelfand 1978 USSR (Russia) 3
Carl L. Siegel 1978 Germany 3
Jean Leray 1979 France 3
André Weil 1979 France 4
Henri Cartan 1980 France 3
Andrei N. Kolmogorov 1980 Russia 4
Lars Ahlfors 1981 Finland 4
Oscar Zariski 1981 USA 3
Hassler Whitney 1982 USA 2
Mark G. Krein 1982 Ukranian SSR 4
Shiing Shen Chern 1983-84 China 2
Paul Erdös 1983-84 Hungary 0
Kunihiko Kodaira 1984-85 Japan 2
Hans Lewy 1984-85 Germany 3
Samuel Eilenberg 1986 Poland 2
Atle Selberg 1986 Norway 2
Kiyoshi Ito 1987 Japan 3
Peter D. Lax 1987 Hungary/USA 3
Friedrich E. Hirzebruch 1988 Germany 3
Lars Hormander 1988 Sweden 3
Alberto Calderón 1989 Argentina 3
John Willard Milnor 1989 USA 3
Ennio De Giorgi 1990 Italy 3
Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro 1990 Russia 3
Lennart A. Carleson 1992 Sweden 4
John G. Thompson 1992 USA 3
Mikhael Gromov 1993 Russia 3
Jacques Tits 1993 Belgium 4
Jurgen K. Moser 1994-95 Germany 3
Robert Langlands 1995-96 Canada 2
Andrew Wiles 1995-96 Great Britain 3
Joseph B. Keller 1997 USA 3
Yakov G. Sinai 1997 Russia 4
Laszlo Lovasz 1999 Hungary 1
Elias M. Stein 1999 Belgium/USA 2
Raoul Bott 2000 Hungary 3
Jean-Pierre Serre 2000 France 2
Vladimir I. Arnold 2001 Russia 5
Saharon Shelah 2001 Israel 1
Mikio Sato 2002/3 Japan 4
John T. Tate 2002/3 USA 3
Gregory Margulis 2005 USSR 3
Serge Novikov 2005 USSR 3
Hillel Furstenberg 2006/7 Israel 2
Stephen Smale 2006/7 USA 4
Pierre Deligne 2008 Belgium 3
David Mumford 2008 Great Britain 2
Phillip A. Griffiths 2008 USA 3
Dennis Sullivan 2010 USA 3
Shing-Tung Yau 2010 USA 2
Michael Aschbacher 2012 USA 2
Luis Caffarelli 2012 USA 3
Michael Artin 2013 USA 3
George Daniel Mostow 2013 USA 3
Peter C. Sarnak 2014 USA 2
James G. Arthur 2015 Canada 4
Charles Fefferman 2017 USA 2
Richard Schoen 2017 USA 3
Alexander Beilinson 2018 Russia/USA 4
Vladimir Drinfeld 2018 Ukraine/USA 4
Gregory F. Lawler 2019 USA 2
Jean-Francois Le Gall 2019 France 2
Simon K. Donaldson 2020 Great Britain 4
Yakov M. Eliashberg 2020 Russia/USA 4
Steele Prize (Lifetime Achievement) winners
NAME YEAR COUNTRY ERDÖS NUMBER
Salomon Bochner 1979 Poland 2
Antoni Zygmund 1979 Poland 2
André Weil 1980 France 4
Gerhard P. Hochschild 1980 Germany 3
Oscar Zariski 1981 Poland 3
Fritz John 1982 Germany 4
Shiing Shen Chern 1983 China 2
Joseph L. Doob 1984 USA 2
Hassler Whitney 1985 USA 2
Saunders Mac Lane 1986 USA 3
Samuel Eilenberg 1987 Poland 2
Deane Montgomery 1988 USA 3
Irving Kaplansky 1989 Canada 1
Raoul Bott 1990 Hungary 3
Armand Borel 1991 Switzerland 3
Peter D. Lax 1992 Hungary/USA 3
Eugene B. Dynkin 1993 Russia/USA 3
Louis Nirenberg 1994 Canada/USA 3
John T. Tate 1995 USA 3
Goro Shimura 1996 Japan 2
Ralph S. Phillips 1997 USA 2
Nathan Jacobson 1998 USA 3
Richard V. Kadison 1999 USA 3
Isadore M. Singer 2000 USA 3
Harry Kesten 2001 Netherlands/USA 2
Elias M. Stein 2002 Belgium/USA 2
Michael Artin 2002 USA 3
Ronald L. Graham 2003 USA 1
Victor W. Guillemin 2003 USA 3
Cathleen S. Morawetz 2004 USA 3
Izrail M. Gelfand 2005 USSR (Russia) 3
Frederick W. Gehring 2006 USA 2
Dennis P. Sullivan 2006 USA 3
Henry P. Mckean, Jr. 2007 USA 2
George Lusztig 2008 USA 3
Luis Caffarelli 2009 Argentina 3
William Fulton 2010 USA 2
John Willard Milnor 2011 USA 3
Ivo Babuska 2012 Czech Rep./USA 3
Yakov G. Sinai 2013 Russia 4
Phillip A. Griffiths 2014 USA 3
Victor Kac 2015 USA 3
Barry Martin Simon 2016 USA 2
James Grieg Arthur 2017 Canada 4
Jean Bourgain 2018 Belgium/USA 2
Jeff Cheeger 2019 USA 3
Karen Uhlenbeck 2020 USA 3
A. M. Turing Award winners
NAME YEAR ERDÖS NUMBER
Alan Perlis 1966 3
M. V. Wilkes 1967 4
R. W. Hamming 1968 7
Marvin Minsky 1969 4
J. H. Wilkinson 1970 3
John McCarthy 1971 4
E. W. Dijkstra 1972 6
C. W. Bachman 1973 8
Donald Knuth 1974 2
Herbert Simon 1975 3
Allen Newell 1975 4
Dana Scott 1976 3
Michael Rabin 1976 2
John Backus 1977 5
R. W. Floyd 1978 3
K. E. Iverson 1979 6
C. A. R. Hoare 1980 4
Edgar F. Todd 1981 7
S. A. Cook 1982 3
Dennis Ritchie 1983 3
K. L. Thompson 1983 7
N. E. Wirth 1984 3
Richard M. Karp 1985 2
John E. Hopcroft 1986 3
Robert E. Tarjan 1986 3
John Cocke 1987 8
Ivan Sutherland 1988 6
W. M. Kahan 1989 4
F. J. Corbato 1990 5
Robin Milner 1991 5
Butler Lampson 1992 6
Juris Hartmanis 1993 3
Richard Stearns 1993 3
Edward Feigenbaum 1994 4
Raj Reddy 1994 4
Manuel Blum 1995 2
Amir Pnueli 1996 2
D. Engelbart 1997 6
J. N. Gray 1998 5
Frederick Brooks 1999 5
A. C.-C. Yao 2000 2
O.-J. Dahl 2001 5
K. Nygaard 2001 5
A. Shamir 2002 2
R. L. Rivest 2002 2
L. M. Adleman 2002 2
Alan Kay 2003 8
R. E. Kahn 2004 3
V. G. Cerf 2004 2
Peter Naur 2005 5
Frances E. Allen 2006 7
J. Sifakis 2007 4
E. A. Emerson 2007 4
E. M. Clarke 2007 3
Barbara Liskov 2008 4
Charles P. Thacker 2009 7
Leslie G. Valiant 2010 3
Judea Pearl 2011 3
Silvio Micali 2012 3
Shafi Goldwasser 2012 2
Leslie Lamport 2013 3
Michael Stonebraker 2014 3
Martin E. Hellman 2015 3
Whitfield Diffie 2015 3
Tim Berners-Lee 2016 4
John L. Hennessy 2017 4
David A. Patterson 2017 3
Yoshua Bengio 2018 4
Geoffrey E. Hinton 2018 4
Yann LeCun 2018 4
Edwin E. Catmull 2019 ?
Pat Hanrahan 2019 6
Mathematics members of the National Academy of Sciences as of 2001
NAME ERDÖS NUMBER
Arnold, Vladimir I. 5
Artin, Michael 3
Aschbacher, Michael 3
Askey, Richard A. 2
Atiyah, Michael 4
Bass, Hyman 3
Bloch, Spencer J. 3
Bombieri, Enrico 2
Borel, Armand 3
Bott, Raoul 3
Browder, Felix E. 4
Browder, William 3
Burkholder, Donald L. 3
Caffarelli, Luis A. 3
Calabi, Eugenio 2
Cartan, Henri P. 3
Cheeger, Jeff 3
Chern, Shiing-shen 2
Cohen, Paul J. 5
Connes, Alain 3
Cox, David R. 3
Daubechies, Ingrid 3
Diaconis, Persi 2
Donaldson, Simon K. 4
Doob, Joseph L. 2
Dynkin, Eugene B. 3
Faddeev, Lyudvig Dmitrievich 7
Federer, Herbert 3
Fefferman, Charles L. 2
Feit, Walter 3
Freedman, Michael H. 3
Friedman, Avner 3
Fulton, William 3
Furstenberg, Hillel H. 2
Gale, David 2
Gehring, Frederick W. 2
Gelfand, Izrail M. 3
Gleason, Andrew M. 3
Glimm, James 4
Graham, Ronald L. 1
Grenander, Ulf 2
Griffiths, Phillip A. 3
Gromov, Mikhael L. 3
Guillemin, Victor 3
Hamilton, Richard S. 3
Hirzebruch, Friedrich 3
Hochschild, Gerhard P. 3
Hochster, Melvin 3
Hormander, Lars 3
Howe, Roger 2
Ito, Kiyosi 3
Jaffe, Arthur M. 5
Jones, Vaughan F. 4
Kadison, Richard V. 3
Kalman, Rudolf E. 4
Kaplansky, Irving 1
Kazhdan, David 3
Kirby, Robion C. 4
Kohn, Joseph J. 3
Kostant, Bertram 2
Kruskal, Martin D. 6
Langlands, Robert P. 2
Lang, Serge 3
Lawson, H. Blaine 3
Lax, Peter D. 3
Lieb, Elliott H. 2
Lusztig, George 3
Mac Lane, Saunders 3
Mackey, George W. 2
MacPherson, Robert 3
Margulis, Gregory A. 3
Mather, John N. 3
Mazur, Barry C. 2
McDuff, Dusa 3
McKean, Henry P. 2
Milnor, John Willard 3
Mostow, George Daniel 3
Nash, John F. 4
Nelson, Edward 5
Nirenberg, Louis 3
Novikov, Sergei P. 3
Ornstein, Donald S. 2
Palis, Jacob, Jr. 4
Quillen, Daniel G. 3
Rabinowitz, Paul H. 4
Ratner, Marina ?
Ribet, Kenneth A. 3
Sato, Mikio 4
Schoen, Richard M. 3
Serre, Jean-Pierre 2
Serrin, James B. 3
Shafarevich, Igor R. 4
Sinai, Yakov G. 4
Singer, Isadore M. 3
Smale, Stephen 4
Solovay, Robert 2
Spencer, Donald C. 3
Stanley, Richard P. 2
Stein, Charles M. 3
Stein, Elias M. 2
Steinberg, Robert 3
Sternberg, Shlomo 2
Stroock, Daniel W. 3
Sullivan, Dennis P. 3
Swan, Richard G. 3
Tate, John T. 3
Taubes, Clifford H. 4
Thompson, John G. 3
Thurston, William P. 2
Tits, Jacques 4
Uhlenbeck, Karen K. 3
Varadhan, Srinivasa S. R. 2
Whitehead, George W. 4
Wiles, Andrew J. 3
Yau, Shing-Tung 2
Zelmanov, Efim I. 3
Other distinguished scholars and famous people
NAME FIELD OF RESEARCH ERDÖS NUMBER
Walter Alvarez geology 5
David Blackwell mathematics, statistics 2
Malcolm K. Brachman nuclear physics, oil, bridge 6
Sergey Brin Google 3
Rudolf Carnap philosophy 4
Gregory Chaitin mathematics 3
Ahmad Chalabi Iraqi politics 6
Jule G. Charney meteorology 4
Noam Chomsky linguistics 4
Francis Collins biology 3
Freeman J. Dyson quantum physics 2
Paul R. Ehrlich population studies 4
Georg Frobenius mathematics 3
George Gamow nuclear physics and cosmology 4
Kurt Gödel mathematics 3
Stephen Hawking relativity and cosmology 4
John L. Hennessey comp. sci., Stanford U president 4
David Hilbert mathematics 4
John J. Hopfield physics and neuroscience 5
Pascual Jordan quantum physics 4
Theodore von Kármán aeronautical engineering 4
Ephraim Katchalski-Katzir scientist and Israeli president 2
Tom Lehrer music performance 4
Benoit Mandelbrot mathematics (fractals) 3
Danica McKellar acting and popular math writing 4
Angela Merkel German politics 5
Oskar Morgenstern economics 4
Rolf Nevanlinna mathematics 5
J. Robert Oppenheimer nuclear physics 4
Larry Page Google 3
Roger Penrose relativity and cosmology 3
Jean Piaget psychology 3
Karl Popper philosophy 4
Srinivasa Ramanujan mathematics 3
Carl Sagan astronomy 4
Edwin E. Salpeter astrophysics 5
Issai Schur mathematics 2
Claude E. Shannon electrical engineering 3
Waclaw Sierpinski mathematics 2
John Maynard Smith biology 4
Ronald L. Smith mathematics and bridge 3
Arnold Sommerfeld atomic physics 4
Ivar Stakgold mathematics and bridge 4
H. Eugene Stanley physics and interdisciplinary 4
Leo Szilard physics (Manhattan Project) 4
Edward Teller nuclear physics 3
John Wilder Tukey statistics 2
Alan Turing computer science 5
George Uhlenbeck atomic physics 2
J. Craig Venter biology 3
John von Neumann mathematics 3
John A. Wheeler nuclear physics 3
Stephen Wolfram inventor of Mathematica 2
It would have been nice to find an Erdös number for the great twentieth century mathematician, philosopher, and activist Bertrand Russell. However, he collaborated very little, as did his coauthor Alfred North Whitehead. Thus we can’t find a path using research articles. However, Sachi Sri Kantha points out the following, which also would give small Erdös numbers to several other prominent scientists: "Both Russell and Albert Einstein have impeccable credentials as mathematicians; equally impeccable are their credentials as anti-establishment peace activists against militarism and warfare. They authored the Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955, which was the last public document authored by Einstein, before his death. Though it is not a mathematical paper. this Russell-Einstein Manifesto is a valid collaboration of two peace activist scientists, given the tenor of McCarthy era. It is also counted as one of Russell’s publication [source: A Bibliography of Bertrand Russell, vol.II, Serial Publications 1890-1990, by K.Blackwell and H.Ruja, Routledge, London, 1994, pp.194-196]. The specific title is TEXTS OF SCIENTISTS’ APPEAL FOR ABOLITION OF WAR, New York Times, 10 July 1955, p.25. This was the original citation, and it had been reproduced umpteen times in other journals, magazines and newspapers. The worth of this Russell-Einstein Manifesto was that according to the citation in the bibliography: ‘The entire Rusell-Einstein manifesto with Russell’s prefatory remarks. The other signatories, besides Einstein, were Max Born, P.W.Bridgman, L.Infeld, F.Joliot-Curie, Linus Pauling, H.J.Muller, C.F.Powell, J.Rotblat and Hideko Yukawa.’ Among these, at the time of its release, all except Einstein’s collaborator Infeld and Rotblat were Nobelists in science. Later in 1995, Rotblat received the Nobel Peace Prize. Thus other Nobelists like Bridgman (physics 1946), Joliot-Curie (chemistry, 1935), H.J.Muller (medicine, 1946), Powell (physics, 1950), Rotblat (peace, 1995) and Yukawa (physics, 1949), all of whom have not been included in your current list of Erdos Number Nobelists, receive an Erdos Number of 3, courtesy of Einstein. Since Russell was also the only mathematician who received the Nobel literature prize, this Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955 is also indicative of his eminent stature as a literateur."
Here is another interesting story, suggesting that Peter Lax should have a non-integer Erdös number. It comes from Istvan Hargittai.
"Abel-laureate Peter Lax is listed with Erdös number 3. I would like to suggest to correct this because Peter Lax, in fact, has a unique Erdös number of one and a half! Peter and I recorded three in-depth conversations during the past few years in Budapest and in New York. A composite version, translated into Hungarian, has appeared in Hungarian in November 2007 in the magazine of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, called Magyar Tudomany. The original English-language version of the composite is awaiting publication in The Mathematical Intelligencer. Among many other topics, we talked about Paul Erdös, and Peter’s Erdös number also came up in the conversation. How did Lax figure out that his Erdös number was 1.5? Lax never wrote a paper with Erdös, but Peter’s first paper was on a conjecture of Erdös. That was in 1944. Even before that, a paper in 1943, by Erdös, which appeared in The Annals of Mathematics (volume 44, pages 643-646), had a footnote, which said, ‘This proof is due to Mr. P. Lax. Oral communication.’ This footnote accounts for Lax’s Erdos number of 1.5. (At this time, Peter was 17 years old.)"
Here is a path to the famous mathematician Laplace, found by Leonid Yanushevich:
1. Paul Erdos to Ernst Gabor Straus
Erdös, P.; Straus, E. G. On linear independence of sequences in a Banach space. Pacific J. Math. 3, (1953). 689–694
2. Ernst Gabor Straus to Albert Einstein
Einstein, Albert; Straus, Ernst G. The influence of the expansion of space on the gravitation fields surrounding the individual stars. Rev. Modern Phys. 17, (1945). 120–124
3. Albert Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest
A. Einstein, P. Ehrenfest, Zur Quantentheorie des Strahlungsgleichgewichts Zeitschrift für Physik 19: 301–306 (1923)
4. Paul Ehrenfest to Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
P. Ehrenfest, H. Kamerlingh Onnes, Vereinfachte Ableitung der kombinatorischen Formel, welche der Planckschen Strahlungstheorie zugrunde liegt Annalen der Physik 351: 1021–1024 (1915)
5. Heike Kamerlingh Onnes to Antoine Henri Becquerel
Becquerel, H. & Becquerel, J. & H. Kamerlingh Onnes, On phosphorescence at very low temperature, in: KNAW, Proceedings, 12, 1909-1910, Amsterdam, 1910, pp. 76–88
6. Antoine Henri Becquerel to A. Edmond Becquerel
"Institut de France. Mémoire sur la température de l’air à la surface du sol et de la terre jusqu’à trente-six mètres de profondeur, ainsi que sur la température de deux sols, l’un dénudé, l’autre couvert de gazon, pendant l’année 1882", Paris: impr. de Firmin-Didot, 1883
7. A. Edmond Becquerel to Antoine Cesar Becquerel
Réduction élecfrochimique du cobalt, du nickel, de l’or, de l’argent et du platine; par MM. Becquerel et Ed. Becquerel [Comptes rendus Academie des sciences, vol. 55, p. 18; 1862]
8. Antoine Cesar Becquerel to Jean-Baptiste Biot
Sur la nature de la radiation émanée de l’étincelle électrique, qui excite la phosphorescence à distance; par MM. Biot et Becquerel. [Comptes rendus Academie des sciences, vol. 8, p. 223; 1839]
9. Jean-Baptiste Biot to Francois Arago
Mémoire sur les affinités des corps pour la lumière, et particulièrement sur les forces réfringentes des différens gaz, par MM. Biot et Arago (1806) [ Memoires de l’Institut 7: 301–85]
10. Francois Arago to Gaspard de Prony
Exposé des recherches faites par ordre de l’Académie royale des Sciences, pour déterminer les forces élastiques de la vapeur d’eau à de hautes températures. [Annales de chimie et de physique, vol. 43, p. 78; 1830]
11. Gaspard de Prony to Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau
Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau and Marie Riche de Prony, “Rapport sur un appareil établi à la Monnaie pour faire consumer la fumée des machines (Institut, 16 janvier 1809),” in Annales de chimie 69 (1809), 189–203
12. Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau to Jean Darcet
Rapport sur les couleurs pour la porcelaine du citoyen Dihl. Darcet, Guyton et Fourcroy, Annales de chimie, vol. 25 [p.83; 1797]
13. Jean Darcet to Antoine Lavoisier
Franklin, B., Lavoisier, A., et al. (1784), Rapport des commissaires chargés par le Roi de l’examen du magnétisme animal
[Republished later in 2002: Report of the commissioners charged by the King with the examination of animal magnetism, 1784. Benjamin Franklin, Majault, Le Roy, Sallin, Jean-Sylvain Bailly, D’Arcet, de Bory, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, Antoine Lavoisier. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 11/2002; 50(4):332–63.]
14. Antoine Lavoisier to Pierre-Simon Laplace
"Mémoire sur la chaleur," Mémoires de l’Académie des sciences (1780), pp. 355–408
URL = http://www.oakland.edu/enp/erdpaths.html
This page was last updated on May 30, 2020.
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