Andrew Michael Odlyzko (Andrzej Odłyżko) (born 23 July 1949) is a Polish- American mathematician and a former head of the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

's Digital Technology Center and of the

Minnesota Supercomputing Institute The Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) in Minneapolis, Minnesota is a core research facility of the University of Minnesota that provides hardware and software resources, as well as technical user support, to faculty and researchers at the un ...

. He began his career in 1975 at Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he stayed for 26 years before joining the

in 2001.

Work in mathematics

Odlyzko received his B.S. and M.S. in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975. In the field of mathematics he has published extensively on analytic number theory,

computational number theory In mathematics and computer science, computational number theory, also known as algorithmic number theory, is the study of computational methods for investigating and solving problems in number theory and arithmetic geometry, including algorith ...

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adve ...

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...

s and computational complexity,

combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many a ...

probability Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an Event (probability theory), event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and ...

, and

error-correcting code In computing, telecommunication, information theory, and coding theory, an error correction code, sometimes error correcting code, (ECC) is used for controlling errors in data over unreliable or noisy communication channels. The central idea i ...

s. In the early 1970s, he was a co-author (with D. Kahaner and Gian-Carlo Rota) of one of the founding papers of the modern

umbral calculus In mathematics before the 1970s, the term umbral calculus referred to the surprising similarity between seemingly unrelated polynomial equations and certain "shadowy" techniques used to "prove" them. These techniques were introduced by John Bliss ...

. In 1985 he and Herman te Riele disproved the Mertens conjecture. In mathematics, he is probably known best for his work on the Riemann zeta function, which led to the invention of improved algorithms, including the Odlyzko–Schönhage algorithm, and large-scale computations, which stimulated extensive research on connections between the zeta function and random matrix theory. As a direct collaborator of Paul Erdős, he has Erdős number 1.

Work on electronic communication

More recently, he has worked on communication networks, electronic publishing, economics of security and

electronic commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manag ...

. In 1998, he and Kerry Coffman were the first to show that one of the great inspirations for the Internet bubble, the myth of "Internet traffic doubling every 100 days," was false. In the paper "Content is Not King", published in ''

First Monday ''First Monday'' is an American legal drama television series which aired on CBS during the midseason replacement from January 15 to May 3, 2002. The series centered on the U.S. Supreme Court. Like another 2002 series, ''The Court'', it wa ...

'' in January 2001, he argues that # the

entertainment industry Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and Interest (emotion), interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but is more likely to be one of the activities or events that have dev ...

is a small industry compared with other industries, notably the telecommunications industry; # people are more interested in

communication Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inqu ...

than

entertainment Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but is more likely to be one of the activities or events that have developed over thousan ...

; # and therefore that entertainment "content" is not the killer app for the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...

. In 2012, he became a fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research and in 2013 of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings ...

Network value

In the paper "Metcalfe's Law is Wrong","Metcalfe's Law is Wrong"
Bob Briscoe, Andrew Odlyzko, and Benjamin Tilly, July 2006 IEEE Spectrum. Andrew Odlyzko argues that the incremental value of adding one person to a network of ''n'' people is approximately the ''n''th harmonic number, so the total value of the network is approximately ''n'' * log(''n)''. Since this curves upward (unlike

Sarnoff's law David Sarnoff (February 27, 1891 – December 12, 1971) was an American businessman and pioneer of American radio broadcasting, radio and television. Throughout most of his career, he led the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in various capaciti ...

), it implies that Metcalfe's conclusion – that there is a

critical mass In nuclear engineering, a critical mass is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The critical mass of a fissionable material depends upon its nuclear properties (specifically, its nuclear fis ...

in networks, leading to a network effect – is qualitatively correct. But since this linearithmic function does not grow as rapidly as Metcalfe's law, it implies that many of the quantitative expectations based on Metcalfe's law were excessively optimistic. For example, by Metcalfe, if a hypothetical network of 100,000 members has a value of $1M, doubling its membership would increase its value 4X (200,000²/100,000²). However Odlyzko predicts its value would only slightly more than double: 2e5*log(2e5)/(1e5*log(1e5). Empirical tests, in part stimulated by this criticism, strongly support Metcalfe's law.

Financial History

In recent years, Odlyzko has published multiple papers on the financial history of bubbles, particularly the South Sea and English railway episodes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, respectively.

References

External links

Andrew Odlyzko: Home Page

Digital Technology Center
at the