Erdős & Amphetamines
2018-04-18 17:52:47.496864+02 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
Paul Erdős' amphetamine consumption (Reddit), a graph of Paul Erdos's number of publications over time, with the portions of his life in which he used amphetamines noted.
From the "Personality" section on his Wikipedia page:
After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month. Erdős won the bet, but complained that during his abstinence, mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine use.