Clippings

Graham had less success influencing Erdös’s health. “He badly needed a cataract operation,” Graham said. “I kept trying to persuade him to schedule it. But for years he refused, because he’d be laid up for a week, and he didn’t want to miss even seven days of working with mathematicians. He was afraid of being old and helpless and senile.” Like all of Erdös’s friends, Graham was concerned about his drug-taking. In 1979, Graham bet Erdös $500 that he couldn’t stop taking amphetamines for a month. Erdös accepted the challenge, and went cold turkey for thirty days. After Graham paid up — and wrote the $500 off as a business expense — Erdös said, “You’ve showed me I’m not an addict. But I didn’t get any work done. I’d get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper. I’d have no ideas, just like an ordinary person. You’ve set mathamatics back a month.” He promptly resumed taking pills, and mathematics was the better for it.