David Allen Bayer (born November 29, 1955) is an American

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History O ...

known for his contributions in

algebra Algebra () is one of the broad areas of mathematics. Roughly speaking, algebra is the study of mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating these symbols in formulas; it is a unifying thread of almost all of mathematics. Elementary a ...

and

symbolic computation In mathematics and computer science, computer algebra, also called symbolic computation or algebraic computation, is a scientific area that refers to the study and development of algorithms and software for manipulating mathematical expression ...

and for his consulting work in the movie industry. He 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 ...

of mathematics at

Barnard College Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbi ...

, Columbia University.

Education and career

Bayer was educated at

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a private liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeducational colleges in the United States. It was established as a ...

as an undergraduate, where he attended a course on combinatorial algorithms given by

Herbert Wilf Herbert Saul Wilf (June 13, 1931 – January 7, 2012) was a mathematician, specializing in combinatorics and graph theory. He was the Thomas A. Scott Professor of Mathematics in Combinatorial Analysis and Computing at the University of Pennsyl ...

. During that semester, Bayer related several original ideas to Wilf on the subject. These contributions were later incorporated into the second edition of Wilf and Albert Nijenhuis' influential book ''Combinatorial Algorithms'', with a detailed acknowledgement by its authors. Bayer subsequently earned 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 ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in 1982 under the direction of

Heisuke Hironaka is a Japanese mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1970 for his contributions to algebraic geometry. Career Hironaka entered Kyoto University in 1949. After completing his undergraduate studies at Kyoto University, he received his ...

with a dissertation entitled ''The Division Algorithm and the Hilbert Scheme''. He joined Columbia University thereafter. Bayer is the son of

Bryce Bayer Bryce Edward Bayer (/ˈbaɪər/; pronounced BYE-er, August 15, 1929 – November 13, 2012) was an American scientist who invented the Bayer filter, which is used in most modern digital cameras. He has been called "the maestro without whom photogr ...

, the inventor of the Bayer filter.

Contributions

Bayer has worked in various areas of

and

, including Hilbert functions,

Betti number In algebraic topology, the Betti numbers are used to distinguish topological spaces based on the connectivity of ''n''-dimensional simplicial complexes. For the most reasonable finite-dimensional spaces (such as compact manifolds, finite simplicia ...

s, and

linear programming Linear programming (LP), also called linear optimization, is a method to achieve the best outcome (such as maximum profit or lowest cost) in a mathematical model whose requirements are represented by linear relationships. Linear programming is ...

. He has written a number of highly cited papers in these areas with other notable mathematicians, including Bernd Sturmfels,

Jeffrey Lagarias Jeffrey Clark Lagarias (born November 16, 1949 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States) is a mathematician and professor at the University of Michigan. Education While in high school in 1966, Lagarias studied astronomy at the Summer Science P ...

Persi Diaconis Persi Warren Diaconis (; born January 31, 1945) is an American mathematician of Greek descent and former professional magician. He is the Mary V. Sunseri Professor of Statistics and Mathematics at Stanford University. He is particularly known f ...

, Irena Peeva, and

David Eisenbud David Eisenbud (born 8 April 1947 in New York City) is an American mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI); he previously ser ...

. Bayer is one of ten individuals cited in the white paper published by the pseudonymous

Satoshi Nakamoto Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, authored the bitcoin white paper, and created and deployed bitcoin's original reference implementation. As part of the implementation, Naka ...

describing the technological underpinnings of Bitcoin. He is cited as a co-author, along with

Stuart Haber Stuart Haber is an American cryptographer and computer scientist, known for his contributions in cryptography and privacy-preserving technologies and widely recognized as the co-inventor of the blockchain. His 1991 paper "How to Time-Stamp a Dig ...

and W. Scott Stornetta, of a paper to improve on a system for tamper-proofing

timestamps A timestamp is a sequence of characters or encoded information identifying when a certain event occurred, usually giving date and time of day, sometimes accurate to a small fraction of a second. Timestamps do not have to be based on some absolut ...

by incorporating

Merkle trees In cryptography and computer science, a hash tree or Merkle tree is a tree in which every "leaf" (node) is labelled with the cryptographic hash of a data block, and every node that is not a leaf (called a ''branch'', ''inner node'', or ''inode'') ...

Consulting

Bayer was a mathematics consultant for the film '' A Beautiful Mind'', the

biopic A biographical film or biopic () is a film that dramatizes the life of a non-fictional or historically-based person or people. Such films show the life of a historical person and the central character's real name is used. They differ from docu ...

of John Nash, and also had a cameo as one of the "Pen Ceremony" professors.

References

External links

Bayer's homepage at Columbia University
* *
Dave and Beautiful Math at Swarthmore College Bulletin
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bayer, Dave Living people 1955 births Mathematicians from New York (state) 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Swarthmore College alumni Harvard University alumni Barnard College faculty Algebraists Combinatorialists Algebraic geometers Scientists from Rochester, New York