Paul Erdős - Wikipedia

When he finished the final chapter, almost exactly 29 and a half years later, as a two-volume book with the title “The Society of Society” (1997), it stirred up the scientific community.[3] It was a radical new theory that not only changed sociology, but stirred heated discussions in philosophy, education, political theory and psychology as well. N

Then, from about nine to one, unless he was giving a lecture, he worked at his own mathematics. Four hours creative work a day is about the limit for a mathematician, he used to say.

Alexander Grothendieck, who I also discussed in my  review of The Art of Learning , was one of the most productive, generative, and eccentric mathematicians of the 20th century. Grothendieck was also an energetic alien. According to multiple sources, he went through a ten-year period during which he invented (I suspect he would say discovered

Mince, élégant, affectionnant à la manière américaine des cols amidonnés blancs sur des chemises à fines rayures, bon vivant, volontiers gastronome, amateur de londrès et de cocktails, fréquentant les bars anglais et se frottant volontiers au Tout-Paris, il affichait des idées avancées qu’il soutenait avec juste ce qu’il fallait de condescendance e

Was he smart? No, not exceptionally. Instead, he was a genius. His imaginative leaps were instinctive, unexpected, and at times magical. He was, indeed, an example of what the mathematician Mark Kac called a magician genius, someone whose insights come out of the blue and require intuition more than mere mental processing power. Like a pathfinder,