TEMETNI TUDUNK : HOW TO BURY PEOPLE THAT'S ONE THING WE KNOW : HUNGARIAN STEREOTYPES

 

THE MAN WHO LOVED ONLY NUMBERS by PAUL HOFFMAN : BOOK EXCERPT

pages 62-63

"Death and tragedy have long been part of the Hungarian character.  According to the historian John Lukacs, on All Soul's Day in Erdos's youth, "thousands of people steamed toward the cemeteries of Budapest, with flowers in their hands, on that holy day which is perhaps taken more seriously in Hungary than anywhere else because of the national temperament.  Temetni tudunk - a terse Magyar phrase whose translation requires as many as ten English words to give its proper (and even then, not wholly exact) sense: 'How to bury people - that is one thing we know.'" The phrase was coined long before Hungary had experienced the devastation of the two world wars, whose carnage would come disproportionately from within its borders.

Few countries have had as violent a history as Hungary.  In the ninth century, nomadic Magyar warriors from the steppes of Easter Europe crossed the Carpathian mountains, and renouncing their peripatetic way of life, settled in the middle Danube basin at the heart of what is now Hungary.  The Magyars, also known as the On-Ogurs ("people of the ten arrows"), were skilled archers and javelin throwers who raided their neighbors, plundering Germany from Bavaria to Saxony.  Recent converts to Christianity, the Magyars had to defend their own new territory against a series of invaders.  They held their own until 1241, when several hundred thousand Mongol horseman from Genghis Khan's empire slaughtered half the Magyar population and enslaved much of the rest, a bloodbath from which the country barely recovered "

The problem with Hungary," Erdos once joked, reflecting on his country's history, "is that in every war we choose the wrong side."

THE MAN WHO LOVED ONLY NUMBERS by PAUL HOFFMAN :BOOK EXCERPT

PAUL ERDO'S is the Hungarian Mathematician ...   Page 127
In February 1949, Erdos slipped out of Hungary.  For the next three years he went back and forth between England and the United States before landing a flexible deal at the University of Notre Dame in 1952.  He had to teach only one class and was assigned an assistant who could take over ton the spur of the moment should he have the rge to rush off and finish a proof with a collaborator.  Although Erdos rejected organized religion, he didn't mind teaching at a Catholic school.  "The only thing that bothered me," he joked, "was that there were too many plus signs."  (i.e. the crucifix.)

N is a NUMBER : FILM REVIEW : PAUL ERDOS THE MATHMATICIAN

Math being my worst subject, I wondered if I could follow this DVD/ Film (C 2004) that I found on the shelf of my local library.  "N is a Number" is a documentary by George Paul Csisery about Paul Erdos, one of those geniuses living in their own mind - obsessed with math to the exclusion of much else.  Luckily the film didn't require that I follow along on any formulas that I would get lost in and never find my way out of.  Instead I learned about this unique human being who liked to throw out problems to others and speculate, and was not overly concerned with his theories or ideas being proven.

Paul Erdos (1913-1996) had no home and no job.  He never married or had children.  He was close to his mother and may've had a romance that went nowhere.

He Traveled from place to place sponsored and patronized by various other mathematicians, and before it was all over he had published over 1000 papers and received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University, Great Britain.  The film held my interest without my having to understand the math.

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