The public often thinks of mathematicians as being sequestered in private rooms, rarely talking to others as they work for days to generate new theorems and solve ancient conjectures. This is true for some, but Hungarian-born Paul Erdos showed mathematicians the value of collaborations and "social mathematics." By the time he died, he had published roughly 1,500 papers - more papers than any mathematician the history of the world, having worked with 511 different collaborators. His work ranged through a vast landscape of mathematics, including probability of theory, and set theory.
Fortified by coffee, Erdos did mathematics 19 hours a day. He took amphetamines almost every day to escape depression and foster mathematical ideas and collaborations. Erdos traveled and lived out of a plastic bag, focusing totally on mathematics at the expense of companionship, sex, and food.
He believed that " a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems."