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beyond the book, what contributions did he make? it would seem like the techniques should have helped him solve problems but Wikipedia does not show anything else

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Surely you’re joking. Polya pioneered so much combinatorics I don’t even know where to begin. Heck, a lot of counting problems reduces to polya’s enumeration theorem. The page of “references” to stuff named after him should be a clue to you.

Definitely. Whatever one may think of "How to Solve It," Polya was a renowned mathematician. The book is like the Richard Hamming lectures that often come up on HN: Great thoughts from a great mind but not easily applied by the average or even above average Joe.

Richard hamming lectures? I'd google, but I wouldn't know if I'd found the ones you meant.

Try https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35776480

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30

But besides combinatorics, what has he done for us lately? ;)

>lately

Luckily for the world, he dodged the 'startup craze' bullet ;) - by living before it started up :)

Every so often there's a comment on here that's simultaneously so ignorant and so arrogant that it crosses from offensive to hilarious. Congrats, this one is up there with the likes of "it could just be rsync".

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