This book is a tribute to Paul Erdos, the wandering mathematician once described as the "prince of problem solvers and the absolute monarch of problem posers." It examines the legacy of open problems he left to the world after his death in 1996.

Many of the best researchers and writers in discrete mathematics come together in a volume inspired by Ron Graham.

本书共分两编:第一编传记及祝贺文章、第二编学术论文。

The lectures concentrate on highlights in Combinatorial (ChaptersII and III) and Number Theoretical (ChapterIV) Extremal Theory, in particular on the solution of famous problems which were open for many decades. However, the organization of the lectures in six chapters does neither follow the historic developments nor the connections between ideas in several cases. With the speci?ed auxiliary results in ChapterI on Probability Theory, Graph Theory, etc., all chapters can be read and taught independently of one another. In addition to the 16 lectures organized in 6 chapters of the main part of the book, there is supplementary material for most of them in the Appendix. In parti- lar, there are applications and further exercises, research problems, conjectures, and even research programs. The following books and reports [B97], [ACDKPSWZ00], [A01], and [ABCABDM06], mostly of the authors, are frequently cited in this book, especially in the Appendix, and we therefore mark them by short labels as [B], [N], [E], and [G]. We emphasize that there are also “Exercises” in [B], a “Problem Section” with contributions by several authors on pages 1063–1105 of [G], which are often of a combinatorial nature, and “Problems and Conjectures” on pages 172–173 of [E].

Graduate text focusing on algebraic methods that can be applied to prove the Erdős-Ko-Rado Theorem and its generalizations.