Fan Chung and Ron Graham's book Erdos on Graphs: His Legacy of Unsolved Problems (A. K. Peters, 1998) collects together all of Erdos's open problems in graph theory that they could find into a single volume, complete with bounties where applicable. Of course Erdos posed many other open problems in combinatorics and number theory that do not appear in this book. I once heard a rumor that some people were working on a project to publish a similar but more comprehensive book or series of books, covering all of Erdos's open problems, but I don't know if the rumor is true. Does such a compilation exist? If not, is there anything else like this besides Chung and Graham's book?
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3I've added the "Erdos" tag. – Ian Morris Jun 11 '10 at 13:24
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"I see no inconsistency, ergo it exists", said Jon Mathematically. – Jon Awbrey Jun 14 '10 at 17:45
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old usenet sci.math post jul 11 1992 by greg kuperberg archived by rusin: http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/known-math/93_back/prizes.erd – vzn Mar 18 '13 at 15:28
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Tag open-problems-list seems relevant – Alexander Chervov Sep 01 '17 at 17:09
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@AlexanderChervov : Good suggestion. I have added that tag. – Timothy Chow Sep 01 '17 at 17:10
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1Alexander Soifer has been for years threatening to publish a book which should give a comprehensive account of Erdős's open problems. The book was even listed briefly in Springer's catalogue but then it disappeared, probably because it is not ready yet. You may want to contact him. – Andrés E. Caicedo Sep 01 '17 at 17:18
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@vzn Unfortunately that link doesn't seem to work any more, but fortunately, the Wayback Machine has saved a copy: The Erdos kitty: At least $9050 in prizes! – Timothy Chow Jul 13 '23 at 14:18
5 Answers
I would be most impressed if there existed such a list! The closest thing I've found is this long list of references to papers Erdős published containing problems. I don't know if it is comprehensive, and it has some overlap with the content of Chung and Graham's book, but it at least contains the names of the Erdős papers cited in Guy's Unsolved Problems in Number Theory.
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Although not an answer to the original question, but let me mention that Erdos' papers up to 1989 are available here.
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This is not a direct answer to your (good!) question, but Research Problems in Discrete Geometry by Brass, Moser, and Pach (Springer 2005) cites Erdős more than 100 times.
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For graph theory problems, I find this the most comprehensive resource: http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~erdosproblems/
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1This appears to be an online "living version" of the 1998 book by Ronald Graham and Fan Chung, mentioned by the OP. Good to know. – Todd Trimble Sep 01 '17 at 19:04
Recently, Thomas Bloom created a website dedicated exactly to this:
https://www.erdosproblems.com/
It currently lists 214 problems, both open and closed. They are all tagged and some problems carry additional information. The list still evolves and if a problem is missing you might want to contact Thomas directly.
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Very nice! Although this list may not yet be complete, I think it is a better answer than the answer I previously accepted, so I am accepting it. – Timothy Chow Jul 13 '23 at 14:13