Fred Stephen Roberts (born June 19, 1943)Curriculum vitae
from Roberts' web site, retrieved 2010-02-16. 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 On ...

, a professor of mathematics at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

, and a former director of

DIMACS The Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) is a collaboration between Rutgers University, Princeton University, and the research firms AT&T, Bell Labs, Applied Communication Sciences, and NEC. It was founded in 1 ...

Biography

Roberts did his undergraduate studies at

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

, and received his Ph.D. from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in 1968; his

doctoral advisor A doctoral advisor (also dissertation director, dissertation advisor; or doctoral supervisor) is a member of a university faculty whose role is to guide graduate students who are candidates for a doctorate, helping them select coursework, as well ...

was Dana Scott. After holding positions at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

, RAND, and the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...

, he joined the Rutgers faculty in 1972. He has been vice president of the

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific socie ...

twice, in 1984 and 1986, and has been director of DIMACS since 1996.

Research

Roberts' research concerns

graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conne ...

and

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 their applications in modeling problems in the

social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...

s and

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

. Among his contributions to pure mathematics, he is known for introducing the concept of

boxicity In graph theory, boxicity is a graph invariant, introduced by Fred S. Roberts in 1969. The boxicity of a graph is the minimum dimension in which a given graph can be represented as an intersection graph of axis-parallel box (shape), boxes. That i ...

, the minimum dimension needed to represent a given undirected graph as an intersection graph of axis-parallel

boxes A box (plural: boxes) is a container used for the storage or transportation of its contents. Most boxes have flat, parallel, rectangular sides. Boxes can be very small (like a matchbox) or very large (like a shipping box for furniture), and can ...

Books

Roberts is the author or co-author of the following books: *''Discrete Mathematical Models, with Applications to Social, Biological and Environmental Problems'', Prentice-Hall, 1976, . Russian translation, Nauka, 1986. *''Graph Theory and its Applications to the Problems of Society'', CBMS-NSF Regional Conference Series in Applied Mathematics 29,

SIAM Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 mi ...

, 1987, . *''Measurement Theory, with Applications to Decisionmaking, Utility, and the Social Sciences'', Encyclopedia of Mathematics and its Applications 7, Addison-Wesley, 1979, . Reprinted by Cambridge University Press, 2009. *''Applied Combinatorics'', Prentice-Hall, 1984. 2nd edition (with B. Tesman), 2004, . 3rd edition, Chapman & Hall, 2009. Chinese translation, Pearson Education Asia, 2005 and 2007. He is also the editor of nearly 20 edited volumes.

Awards and honors

Roberts received the

ACM SIGACT ACM SIGACT or SIGACT is the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory, whose purpose is support of research in theoretical computer science. It was founded in 1968 by Patrick C. Fischer. Publi ...

Distinguished Service Prize in 1999. In 2001, he won the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

Science and Technology Centers Pioneer Award for "pioneering the science and technology center concept". In 2003, DIMACS held a Conference on Applications of Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, in honor of Roberts' 60th birthday. In 2012 he became a fellow 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, ...

.List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
retrieved 2013-07-07.

References

External links

at DIMACS. {{DEFAULTSORT:Roberts, Fred Stephen 1943 births Living people Dartmouth College alumni Stanford University alumni Rutgers University faculty 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Combinatorialists Fellows of the American Mathematical Society