Ronald Graham

Ronald L. Graham, named Ron, ( born October 31, 1935 in Taft, California) is an American mathematician. He carried out pioneering work in the field of discrete mathematics, in particular the Ramsey theory.

Life

Graham earned in 1962 his Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1972 he developed the Graham scan algorithm for computing the convex hull of a simple polygon.

In a publication from 1977 Graham was a large number of as an upper bound for the solution of a problem in Ramsey theory. As Graham's number was this known as the largest used in a mathematical proof number and is also listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Graham has published over 300 articles and 5 books. Along with Donald E. Knuth, and Oren Patashnik he wrote the book Concrete Mathematics.

In 2003 he received the Leroy P. Steele Prize of the American Mathematical Society, whose fellow he is. In 1983 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Warsaw ( Recent developments in Ramsey theory ).

Graham supported the concept of the Erdős number of his friend Paul Erdős. His Erdős number is 1

Graham is married to the mathematician Fan Chung.

Writings

• With Paul Erdos: Old and new results in combinatorial number theory. L' Enseignement Mathématique, 1980
• With Fan Chung: Erdos on Graphs. His legacy of unsolved problems. A. K. Peters, 1998
• Jaroslav Nesetril (ed.): The mathematics of Paul Erdos. 2 vols. Springer, 1997
• Rudiments of Ramsey Theory. American Mathematical Society, 1981
• By Donald E. Knuth and Oren Patashnik: Concrete Mathematics: a foundation for computer science. Addison-Wesley, 1989; 1994
• With Joel H. Spencer & Bruce L. Rothschild: Ramsey Theory. Wiley, 1980; 1990
• Martin Grötschel & Laszlo Lovasz ( Eds.): Handbook of Combinatorics. MIT Press, 1995
• With Persi Diaconis: Magical Mathematics: the mathematical ideas did animate great magic tricks. Princeton University Press, 2011 ( received the Euler Book Prize )