Daniel Kleitman

Daniel J. Kleitman ( born October 4, 1934 in New York City ) is an American mathematician who deals with combinatorics.

Kleitman studied physics at Cornell University (Bachelor 1954) and Harvard University, where in 1955 he took his master's degree and earned his doctorate under Julian Schwinger 1958 ( Static Properties of Heavy Fermi Particles; deuteron Nucleon Scattering at High Energy). As a post - graduate student, he was 1958/59 at the University of Copenhagen. 1960 to 1966 he was Assistant Professor of Physics at Brandeis University. He moved under the influence of Paul Erdős with whom he published several times, to mathematics. In 1966 he became Associate Professor in 1969 and Professor of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 1979 to 1984 he was Head of the Department there.

Kleitman deals with combinatorics (graph theory ) with applications in operations research.

He was a mathematical consultant for the film Good Will Hunting.

With some other mathematicians ( Ronald Graham, Douglas West, George B. Purdy, Paul Erdős, Fan Chung ), he published under the pseudonym GW Peck from 1979.

1975 to 1982 he was editor of J. Algebraic and Discrete Methods of SIAM. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the New York Academy of Sciences.

His doctoral include Stephen Altschul and Michael Saks.