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From the wikipedia article on Paul Erdős: His colleague Alfréd Rényi said, "a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems", and Erdős drank cop
by fizx 17y ago
From the wikipedia article on Paul Erdős:
His colleague Alfréd Rényi said, "a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems", and Erdős drank copious quantities. (This quotation is often attributed incorrectly to Erdős himself.)[6] After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month.[7] Erdős won the bet, but complained during his abstinence that mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine habit.
- GHFigs 17y agoI wanted to post a quote about the millions of other amphetamine users in the world, but most of them don't seem to meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines. It's almost as though taking amphetamines doesn't make you as smart, productive, and famous as Paul Erdős. Weird, huh? What's weirder is that this seems to be true of all vices and all famous people!
- cakesy 17y agoI don't think anyone was implying that taking Amphetamines makes you smart. But if you are already smart, they may seem to have an effect at improving creativity, inducing new ideas, causing you to think differently. Most people don't use amphetamines to do their work though, or had you not realised that?