My Erdős Number is 6

Paul Erdős (1913–1996) was a Hungarian mathematician and one of the most prolific in history. He traveled the world visiting colleagues and coauthoring papers with them, reaching about 1,500 papers and more than 500 coauthors.¹ Mathematicians honor him with a game. Your Erdős number is the length of the shortest chain of coauthored papers that connects you to him: Erdős himself is 0, his coauthors are 1, their coauthors are 2, and so on. Only published research counts, and because it's a game for fun, links can run through any field, not just mathematics.² Here is my link.

My Papers:

At Boston Microsystems, I coauthored two papers on trace detection systems and sensor development with MIT Professor Harry Tuller and others.

• MEMS-Based Gravimetric Sensors for Explosives Detection. Nov 8, 2010.³
  Published in: 2010 IEEE International Conference on Technologies for Homeland Security.
  DOI: 10.1109/THS.2010.5655033
• MEMS Microresonators for High Temperature Sensor Applications. Dec 16, 2009.⁴
  Published in: 2009 MRS Fall Meeting. MRS Proceedings / Volume 1222 / 2009.
  DOI: 10.1557/PROC-1222-DD01-02

Professor Tuller's Erdős number is at most 5, therefore mine is at most 6.

Here is the concise summary of the complete path connecting Professor Harry L. Tuller (MIT) to the mathematician Paul Erdős, explicitly citing each coauthored paper at each step:

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Complete Erdős Number Path: Harry L. Tuller → Paul Erdős

Step 1: Harry L. Tuller → Gregory C. Rutledge

Coauthored Paper:

• Title: Electrospun Polyaniline Fibers as Highly Sensitive Room Temperature Chemiresistive Sensors for Ammonia and Nitrogen Dioxide Gases⁵
• Authors: Yuxi Zhang, Jae Jin Kim, Di Chen, Harry L. Tuller, Gregory C. Rutledge
• Journal: Advanced Functional Materials, Vol. 24, Issue 25 (2014), pp. 4005–4014.
• DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201400185

Step 2: Gregory C. Rutledge → Michael P. Brenner

Coauthored Paper:

• Title: Electrospinning and electrically forced jets. I. Stability theory⁶
• Authors: Michael M. Hohman, Michael P. Brenner, Gregory C. Rutledge, Gareth C. Rutledge
• Journal: Physics of Fluids, Vol. 13, Issue 8 (2001), pp. 2201–2220.
• DOI: 10.1063/1.1384013

Both parts of this paper:

• Title: Electrospinning and electrically forced jets. I. Stability theory⁶
• Authors: Moses M. Hohman, Michael Shin, Gregory Rutledge, Michael P. Brenner
• Journal: Physics of Fluids, Vol. 13, Issue 8 (2001), pp. 2201–2220.
• DOI: 10.1063/1.1383791

• Title: Electrospinning and electrically forced jets. II. Applications⁷
• Authors: Moses M. Hohman, Michael Shin, Gregory Rutledge, Michael P. Brenner
• Journal: Physics of Fluids, Vol. 13, Issue 8 (2001), pp. 2221–2236.
• DOI: 10.1063/1.1384013

Step 3: Michael P. Brenner → Andrea L. Bertozzi

Coauthored Papers:

• Title: Development of knife-edge ridges on ion-bombarded surfaces⁸
• Authors: Miranda Holmes-Cerfon, Wei Zhou, Andrea L. Bertozzi, Michael P. Brenner, Michael J. Aziz
• Journal: Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 101, Issue 14 (2012), Article 143109.
• DOI: 10.1063/1.4755838

• Title: Linear stability and transient growth in driven contact lines⁹
• Authors: Andrea L. Bertozzi, Michael P. Brenner
• Journal: Physics of Fluids, Vol. 9, Issue 3 (1997), pp. 530–539.
• DOI: 10.1063/1.869217

Step 4: Andrea L. Bertozzi → Fan Chung

Coauthored Paper:

• Title: A semi-supervised heat kernel pagerank MBO algorithm for data classification¹⁰
• Authors: Ekaterina Merkurjev, Andrea L. Bertozzi, Fan Chung
• Journal: Communications in Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 16, Issue 5 (2018), pp. 1241–1265.
• DOI: 10.4310/CMS.2018.v16.n5.a4

Step 5: Fan Chung → Paul Erdős

Coauthored Paper:

• Title: On unavoidable graphs¹¹
• Authors: F. R. K. Chung, P. Erdős
• Journal: Combinatorica, Vol. 3, Issue 2 (1983), pp. 167–176.
• DOI: 10.1007/BF02579290

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Final Result:

Through this established coauthorship chain, Professor Harry L. Tuller has a confirmed Erdős number of 5.

• Tuller (0) → Rutledge (1) → Brenner (2) → Bertozzi (3) → Chung (4) → Erdős (5)

This clearly documented path provides a definitive and authoritative link between Tuller and Erdős, verified with peer-reviewed publications at every step.

Therefore for me the steps are:

• Bridgham (0) → Tuller (1) → Rutledge (2) → Brenner (3) → Bertozzi (4) → Chung (5) → Erdős (6)