Michael from Muckrock sez, "A Hungarian born in the early 20th century, Paul Erdős, mathematician, was well-known and well-liked, the sort of eccentric scientist from the Soviet sphere that made Feds' ears perk up in mid-century America."
His lifetime generated over five hundred scholarly papers and a cult of collaborators. The Erdős number has become a mathy merit badge, and for those that don't hold a coveted Erdős number of 1, there are resources to determine just how many degrees of celebrity separation exist between the man himself and other technical paper bylines.
And like almost all smart individuals of his era, Erdős had a lengthy FBI file–which ultimately concluded no nefarious intent, but rather "nothing to indicate the subject had any interest in any matter than Mathematics."
