Christopher David Godsil is a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

and the former Chair at the Department of

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 appl ...

and

Optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...

in the

faculty of mathematics In contemporary education, mathematics education, known in Europe as the didactics or pedagogy of mathematics – is the practice of teaching, learning and carrying out scholarly research into the transfer of mathematical knowledge. Although rese ...

at the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality ...

. He wrote the popular textbook on algebraic graph theory, entitled ''Algebraic Graph Theory'', with

Gordon Royle Gordon F. Royle is a professor at the School of Mathematics and Statistics at The University of Western Australia. Royle is the co-author (with Chris Godsil) of the book ''Algebraic Graph Theory'' (Springer Verlag, 2001, ). Royle is also known ...

, His earlier textbook on algebraic combinatorics discussed

distance-regular graph In the mathematical field of graph theory, a distance-regular graph is a regular graph such that for any two vertices and , the number of vertices at distance from and at distance from depends only upon , , and the distance between and . ...

s and association schemes.

Background

He started the

Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics ''Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering algebraic combinatorics. It was established in 1992 and is published by Springer Science+Business Media. The editor-in-chief is Ilias S. Kotsireas (Wilfrid Lau ...

, and was the Editor-in-Chief of the

Electronic Journal of Combinatorics The ''Electronic Journal of Combinatorics'' is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering research in combinatorial mathematics. The journal was established in 1994 by Herbert Wilf (University of Pennsylvania) and Neil Calkin ( Ge ...

from 2004 to 2008. He is also on the editorial board of the

Journal of Combinatorial Theory The ''Journal of Combinatorial Theory'', Series A and Series B, are mathematical journals specializing in combinatorics and related areas. They are published by Elsevier. ''Series A'' is concerned primarily with structures, designs, and applicat ...

Series B and

Combinatorica ''Combinatorica'' is an international journal of mathematics, publishing papers in the fields of combinatorics and computer science. It started in 1981, with László Babai and László Lovász as the editors-in-chief with Paul Erdős as honora ...

. He obtained his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in 1979 at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...

under the supervision of Derek Alan Holton. He wrote a paper with

Paul Erdős Paul Erdős ( hu, Erdős Pál ; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. pursued and proposed problems in ...

, so making his

Erdős number The Erdős number () describes the "collaborative distance" between mathematician Paul Erdős and another person, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers. The same principle has been applied in other fields where a particular individual ...

equal to 1.

, Chris D. Godsil, S. G. Krantz, and T. D. Parsons, "Intersection graphs for families of balls in $R\sp n$." ''European J. Combin.'' 9(5), pp. 501-505, (1988).

Notes

References

* * Living people University of Waterloo faculty University of Melbourne alumni Graph theorists Year of birth missing (living people) {{mathematician-stub