Encounters with Paul Erdős

Arthur H. Stone
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Arthur H. Stone: Northeastern University, Department of Mathematics

A chapter in The Mathematics of Paul Erdős I, 2013, pp 93-98 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract My first encounter with Paul Erdős was curiously indirect. As a pre-undergraduate at Cambridge (England) in 1934, I learned from one of the Trinity College tutors that a mathematician named Erdős, passing through Cambridge, had mentioned an intriguing conjecture (attributed to Lusin, I believe), implying that a square could not be dissected into a finite number of unequal smaller square pieces. I passed this problem on to three fellow students, and we eventually found methods that produced counterexamples [1]. Of recent years the advent of high-speed computing has given rise to a considerable industry listing large numbers of dissections of squares into unequal squares ([2] and [6] for example), an industry that could continue indefinitely as there are infinitely many different dissections of this kind.

Keywords: Unequal Squares; Intriguing Conjecture; Considerable Industry; High Speed Computing; Purdue Faculty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-7258-2_6

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