Anonymvs

September 16 | City Park

Here we are, doing math homework by the Anonymvs statue in the city park. This is symbolic: Paul Erdős and his friends, some of whom became famous mathematicians, once brainstormed on problems in this park, by this statue.

People walked by us, some took pictures, one stopped to make a sketch. Needless to say, they were probably looking at the statue, oblivious to its history. One even asked us to move so he could take a picture. But a woman who spoke English passed by and asked us about the man depicted therein. One of us responded: "He was a scribe. And about 60 years ago a group of young mathematicians worked on problems here. Most of them were pretty famous." She responded: "Oh, like you guys!"

But it was more than 60 years. It was in the 30's, before the Nazi occupation. Most of Erdős's friends were Jewish and did not survive the Second World War.