The Paul Erdős Professorship in Mathematics

The Paul Erdős Professorship in Mathematics is the most prestigious departmental faculty award on campus, designed to recognize and support tenure faculty within the department who have made outstanding contributions in teaching, scholarship, service, community outreach, and engaged research at the University of Memphis. The award is named after the legendary mathematician Paul Erdős (26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996), a Hungarian mathematician who published more papers than any other mathematician in history. He worked on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory and probability theory. He collaborated with many other mathematicians, including several at the University of Memphis: Bela Bollobás, Cecil Rousseau, Richard Schelp, and Ralph Faudree. Paul Erdős visited the University of Memphis frequently from the mid 1970s until his death, bringing distinction to the mathematics department at the University, and his influence continues to make its mark on the department.

The creation of the Paul Erdős Professorship was spearheaded by then provost Dr. Ralph Faudree. While multiple donors have given to make this endowment possible, a special thanks goes to both the late T. George Traicoff and the late Cecil Rousseau.  Their generosity has ensured that the Department has a lasting legacy to a special friend in Paul Erdos, while also helping to reward and retain its brightest faculty. 

Paul Erdős Professors

Bentuo Zheng
(2023-2026)

Máté Wierdl
(2020-2023)

David Grynkiewicz
(2016-2019)

Paul Balister
(2013-2016)