D. R. Fulkerson

Delbert Ray Fulkerson (* August 14, 1924, † 10 January 1976) was an American mathematician. His most famous contribution was the co-development of the Ford - Fulkerson algorithm, one of the most widely used algorithms to compute maximum flows in networks.

Fulkerson received his PhD degree in 1951 at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. In 1956 he published along with Lester Randolph Ford Ford - Fulkerson junior algorithm. After Delbert Fulkerson renowned Fulkerson Prize is named, which is awarded for outstanding publications in the discrete mathematics since 1979, every three years jointly by the Mathematical Programming Society and the American Mathematical Society.

Fulkerson was also briefly close to him before his death, to prove the conjecture for Weak Perfect graphs. Here it but Laszlo Lovasz came before. Fulkerson had already gone over to accept the inaccuracy of the assumption and sought counterexamples. After learning of Lovasz evidence, he had only a short time to his old proof attempt to accomplish.