Ronald Graham, noted mathematician and noted juggler.
Graham published more than 350 papers and books with many collaborators, including more than 90 with his wife, Fan Chung, and more than 30 with Paul Erdős. In addition to writing articles with Paul Erdős, Graham had a room in his house reserved for Erdős’s frequent visits, he administered the cash prizes that Erdős created for various problems, and he created the Erdős number, which is the collaboration distance between a mathematician and Erdős. He also created Graham’s number in a 1971 paper on Ramsey theory written with Bruce Rothschild, which was for a time the largest number used in a proof.
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Graham was known for his infectious enthusiasm, his originality, and his accessibility to anyone who had a mathematics question. Along with his many accomplishments in mathematics, Graham was also an accomplished juggler, so much so that he served as president of the International Jugglers Association in 1972, and was skilled in gymnastics and the trampoline.
His page at UCSD.
In college days, Ron was part of a circus act, called the Bouncing Bears. He was on stage with Cirque du Soleil and in an issue of Discover magazine about the Science of the Circus. He was a qualified judge for international trampoline competitions and has a unique bungee trampoline for daily exercise.
MacTutor page:
In 1963 there was a Number Theory Conference in Boulder, Colorado. Graham attended the conference as did Paul Erdős and the two mathematicians met for the first time. Graham recalled [2]:-
I saw this rather senior guy of 50, already quite famous, playing ping-pong during one of the breaks. He asked me if I wanted to play and I agreed. He absolutely killed me! I had played casual ping-pong but I couldn’t believe that this old guy had beaten me. … I went back to New Jersey … I bought a table, joined a club, started playing at Bell Labs, and in the State league. I eventually became the Bell Labs champion at ping-pong, and won one of the New Jersey titles.
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Almost every professional mathematician knows his “Erdős number” – the number of links in the shortest chain of papers, adjacent ones with an author in common, leading to Erdős. For example my [EFR] Erdős number is 2 since I have written a joint paper with a mathematician who has written a joint paper with Erdős and mine [JOC] is 3 since I have written a paper with EFR. This notion (now a part of MathSciNet) was due to Graham in a 1979 paper On properties of a well-known graph or what is your Ramsey number? If you look up this paper you will find that the author is Tom Odda. That was the pseudonym under which Graham wrote the paper (in fact Tom Odda is a Mandarin term of abuse – Graham was learning Mandarin at the time).
Henry Martin, one of the old time New Yorker cartoonists. The NYT obit features a few examples of his work, and I have to admit: they did provoke a chuckle or three.
Finally: Mary Kay Letourneau.
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