Peter McMullen

Peter McMullen ( born May 11, 1942 in Hillingdon, England ) is a British mathematician who is concerned with geometry.

Life and work

McMullen is the son of a mathematician and studied from 1960 at Trinity College, Cambridge and at Birmingham University, where he received his doctorate in 1968. After that, he was also at universities in London, Siegen, University of British Columbia ( Vancouver ), at the University of Freiburg and from 1991 professor at University College London. In 1978, he earned a D. Sc. at University College. There he is now a professor emeritus.

McMullen is a leading scientist in the combinatorial geometry, especially the polyhedral theory, which he treats with abstract algebraic methods and where he eg The proven by Richard P. Stanley G 's conjecture aufstellte,

He proved in 1970 the Upper Bound Conjecture ( by Theodore Motzkin 1957 placed ) on the maximum number of 1, 2, 3, .., ( d-1) -dimensional faces of a d-dimensional convex polyhedron with a given number of vertices. In 1993 he proved a theorem on the number of faces of simple polyhedra ("On simple polytopes ", Inventiones Mathematicae, vol 113, 1993, pp. 419-444 ) using methods of algebraic geometry.

In 1974 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Vancouver ( Metrical and combinatorial properties of convex polytopes ). He is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

Writings

• With GCShephard " Convex Polytopes and the upper bound conjecture ", Cambridge University Press, London Mathematical Society Lecture Notes, 1971