Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Hilary Putnam and Natalie Portman

Here's a riddle:
What do Hilary Putnam and Natalie Portman have in common?
Why, of course, they share talents in common. They are among the very, very few to have Erdos-Bacon numbers--indeed, these two have the same Erdos-Bacon number of 6.

An Erdos number of 1 refers to coauthorship with the mathematician Paul Erdos, (an Erdos number of 2 belongs to those who have coauthored with an Erdos coauther, and so on).

Degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon are calculated by appearing in a performance or film in which Kevin Bacon also appeared.

Hilary Putnam has an Erdos number of 3 (and if anyone can show the coauthorship path in comments, I'd be interested), and a Bacon number of 3 from having appeared as himself in the documentary film Julia Robinson and Hilbert's Tenth Problem.

Natalie Portman has a Bacon number of 1. As an undergraduate at Harvard, she co-authored a paper in neuroscience, giving her an Erdos number of 6. She also won a Westinghouse Prize (Intel Science Talent Search)--making a unique combination with her Oscar for Best Actress.

Not surprisingly, xkcd has illustrated the Erdos-Bacon dream.
at

8 comments:

  1. Richard ZachMarch 1, 2011 at 7:05 PM

    Hilary Putnam coauthored with Marian Boykan Pour-El MR0207555 (34 #7370)
    Marian Boykan Pour-El coauthored with Ian Richards MR0521457 (80d:03059)
    Ian Richards coauthored with Paul Erdős1 MR0439785 (55 #12669)


    http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/searchauthors.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Evelyn BristerMarch 1, 2011 at 7:42 PM

    Neat!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Evelyn BristerMarch 2, 2011 at 2:50 PM

    So Richard, Erdos #4, I've been missing the LogBlog. Any plans to return?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Richard ZachMarch 3, 2011 at 10:18 AM

    I thought I was doing ok with posts recently!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Richard ZachMarch 3, 2011 at 10:21 AM

    PS: About Erdös numbers
    http://ucalgary.ca/~rzach/blog/2007/02/stanleys-erdos-number-is-5.html

    ReplyDelete
  6. Evelyn BristerMarch 3, 2011 at 10:22 AM

    Am I looking in the wrong place? Can I get an update? I see no dates after April 2010 here:
    http://people.ucalgary.ca/~rzach/logblog/

    ReplyDelete
  7. Evelyn BristerMarch 3, 2011 at 10:32 AM

    Ah, Richard, I have now found it and am feeling regret and disappointment at having missed months of your posts!
    URL: http://www.ucalgary.ca/rzach/blog

    But also am feeling joy to see the clear treatment of stats on women--and useful to me at just the right time, as I need to write something up about this.

    The thing is, that once at the old URL, the links on that page to LogBlog and LogBlog Home don't redirect to the new site.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Richard ZachMarch 10, 2011 at 12:29 AM

    Ok I think the old pages now all redirect.

    ReplyDelete

I'm now requiring some form of registration (OpenID) for commenters in hopes that it will cut down on the amount of unwelcome commercial spam.