N is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdös - Region 1 DVD

A man with no home and no job, Paul Erdös was the most prolific mathematician who ever lived. Born in Hungary in 1913, Erdös wrote and co-authored over 1,500 papers and pioneered several fields in theoretical mathematics. At the age of 83 he still spent most of his time on the road, going from math meeting to math meeting, continually working on problems. He died on September 20, 1996 while attending such a meeting in Warsaw, Poland. N is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdös was filmed between 1988 and 1991.

The structure of N is a Number is based on Erdös's 50 years of perpetual wandering, "like a bumblebee," carrying news and mathematical information from university to university. Erdös established himself as a serious mathematician at the age of 20 when he devised a more elegant proof for Chebyshev's theorem, i.e., that there is always a prime number between any number and its double.

In an age dominated by technical wizardry and high tech communications, Erdös was an unusual human link connecting hundreds of people. As he traveled from country to country, Erdös carried with him the latest in mathematical thinking, inspiring others to develop new ideas and, sometimes, entire new fields. In turn, the mathematical community supported this repository of centuries of mathematical knowledge and lore. Every mathematician in the world has an "Erdös Number"-the number of people he or she is removed from having co-authored a paper with Erdös.

N is a Number is a one-hour 16mm documentary filmed over a four-year period in four countries between 1988 and 1991. The film was produced, directed and edited by George Paul Csicsery.

This DVD version of N is a Number includes an additional 20 minutes of footage, added by the director, George Paul Csicsery.