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Attention: Journalist/Producer/Guest Contact
TO SCHEDULE AN INTERVIEW, CONTACT:
Susannah Greenberg Public Relations — 212-727-7271— publicity@bookbuzz.com
 BRUCE SCHECHTER is a witty and
engaging talk show guest who will rivet your audience with tales of an eccentric
mathematical genius, Paul Erdös. Schechter is a former Disney Imagineer and staff writer
for Discover, editor at Physics Today, and widely published popular
author whose articles have appeared in McCalls, Readers Digest, Omni, and
elsewhere. Schechter frequently does guest interviews on radio and lectures on math and
science topics for popular audiences. His new book, My Brain Is Open: The
Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdös, is published by Simon & Schuster
(which has nominated the book for a Pulitzer Prize). Schechter is currently a Knight
Fellow in Science Journalism at MIT. AVAILABILITY: Nationwide by
telephone, travel by arrangement, author tour in New York, DC, and Boston.
DO A SHOW ABOUT ONE OF THE GREATEST
AND MOST ECCENTRIC MATH GENIUSES
WHO EVER LIVED — PURE ENTERTAINMENT!
My Brain Is Open:
The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdös, by Bruce Schechter
"readers will be engrossed,"
says Publishers Weekly
"a captivating portrait",says Kirkus Reviews
"rich entertainment," says New Scientist
"Go out and buy one," says the Telegraph
Simon & Schuster proudly announces the
publication of Bruce Schechter’s popular, fun book exploring the odd life of Paul
Erdös, the brilliant, eccentric mathematician whose 70-year career was eulogized in a
front-page obituary in the New York Times by Gina Kolata in 1996. September marks
the second anniversary of Erdös’s death. His remarkable life will fascinate your
audience.
Bruce Schechter can discuss:
Who was Paul Erdös and what is his most important legacy?
Why did Erdös have no home of his own for fifty years?
What is an Erdös number and how is it like "Six Degrees of
Kevin Bacon"?
Why did Erdös get arrested in East Hampton, New York, along with
Shizuo Kakutani, the father of Michiko Kakutani, the New York Times book
reviewer?
Was Erdös a spy?
What is the "Monty Hall" puzzle and what should you do if
you’re on Let’s Make a Deal and Monty asks if you want to switch doors?
How did an offhand remark by Erdös help win World War II?
Why did Erdös pop so many pills?
Do movies like Pi and Good Will Hunting depict the
math world accurately?
Why did Hungary produce so many geniuses like Erdös?
You attended Erdös’s state funeral in Hungary...what was it
like?
Why is the public so interested in math these days?
What was it like being a Disney Imagineer?
Why do many people say Erdös was a saint?
 Bruce Schechter conveys the beauty of
math using simple, understandable words, stories and anecdotes rather than frightening
numbers and ponderous equations. He is a fun, engaging, humorous, witty interview guest
who doesn’t talk down to audiences. . . but also doesn’t talk above their heads.
Schechter has frequently addressed radio and live audiences and can chat engagingly about
any math or science topic that your audience may wonder about — but we predict your
audience will mostly want to hear all about Paul Erdös, the epitome of the "mad
scientist" and "eccentric genius" whose quirky and remarkable life never
fails to amuse and amaze just about anyone.
For the last fifty years of Paul
Erdös’s life, at almost any hour of the day, mathematicians the world over might
answer a knock at the front door to find a short, frail man with thick eyeglasses and a
rumpled suit, carrying a suitcase containing all his worldly belongings in one hand and a
bag full of papers in the other, who would announce, "My brain is open!" The
visitor was Paul Erdös, one of the greatest and most eccentric mathematicians of the
century.
Having no home or job, and incapable of the most ordinary household
tasks (such as buttering bread), Erdös was sustained by the generosity of colleagues and
by his own belief in the beauty of mathematics.
As David Brooks remarks in his review of My Brain Is Open,
"The world-famous Erdös spent most of his adult years as a hobo, traveling from city
to city to give lectures or talk at conferences, staying a week or two and then moving on,
carrying most of his worldly goods in a couple of shabby suitcases as he moved from one
mathematician’s guest room to another."
My Brain Is Open is Erdös's inspirational story, but it is
also the story of the world of mathematics that Erdös inhabited.To learn more of the
story, go to an article Schechter wrote giving an overview
of Erdös's life and importance. To learn how Schechter became interested in writing
My Brain Is Open, click here.
Kirkus Reviews called My Brain Is
Open a "captivating portrait." Science journalist Dennis
Overbye [Lonelyhearts of the Cosmos] said Schechter’s book is "illuminating
and charmingly written," adding that Schechter "comes through
brilliantly." The New Scientist reviewer, mathematician and popular
journalist Robert Matthews, said Schechter’s book left him with a "better appreciation
of Paul Erdös both as a mathematician and a human being," and found
Schechter’s book to be "better structured, better written and better
judged" compared with another, earlier book on the same subject based on a magazine
article, "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers."
David Brooks wrote in The Telegraph:
"Schechter has a Ph.D. in physics from MIT. Even so, he
writes very well, which strikes me as unfair. . . . [W]ould make a great present
for others or yourself. Go out and buy one. . . . [Erdös] was a genius,
and it is a fine and wondrous thing to watch a genius, even second-hand. And that, of
course, is the great value in reading biographies such as this – not
just the chance to look into a world we rarely see or to hear funny stories, although
those are both good things."
K.C. Cole, whose book The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics
of Truth and Beauty, was a New York Times bestseller, captured the essential
fun spirit of Schechter’s book:
"With affection, insight, and humor, Bruce Schechter
invites us into the wacky world of mathematical genius Paul Erdös– one of
the strangest characters to inhabit the world of science. Schechter does an
admirably agile job of interweaving real mathematics with the far side of human nature,
juxtaposing tall tales and theorems, proofs and one-liners –showing us where math
meets mortals. This book is proof that laughter and enlightenment go hand in
hand."
Schechter has a doctorate in theoretical physics
from MIT. He has written frequently on popular subjects for magazines including Discover,
Omni, McCall’s, Science, Scientific American, and Reader’s Digest,
and is a former Disney Imagineer. He is currently a Knight Fellow in Science Journalism at
MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Bruce Schechter tells how he came to write My Brain Is
Open. To learn more about Paul Erdös, read an article that Bruce Schechter wrote to give an overview of
Erdös's life.
My Brain Is Open will be published by Oxford University Press in the United
Kingdom.
Contact:
Susannah Greenberg Public Relations
212-727-7271
publicity@bookbuzz.com
Much more about Schechter
and his book can be found at: http://bookbuzz.com
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