Fourth Estate

Paul Hoffman is the publisher of Encyclopaedia Britannica. He is the host of the five-part PBS series Great Minds of Science and a frequent correspondent on television shows such as CBS, This Morning and The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. For ten years, Hoffman was the president and editor-in-chief of Discover magazine. He is the author of ten books including Archimedes’ Revenge. He lives in Chicago, Illinois and Woodstock, New York.Paul Hoffman first met Erdós in 1986 and interviewd him over the last ten years of his life, even following him on his mathematical sojourns. Hoffman’s 1987 profile of Erdós in the Atlantic Monthly won the National Magazine Award for feature writing, the most prestigious award in American magazine publishing. In their citation the judges proclaimed it ‘a minor classic, written with amazing clarity and wit’.