Gerard Laman (August 22, 1924 – September 22, 2009) was a Dutch mathematician who worked on graph theory. Gerard Laman (mathematician)

Early life

He completed high school studies at the

Stedelijk Gymnasium Leiden Stedelijk Gymnasium Leiden is a gymnasium in the Netherlands. Located in Leiden, it is one of the oldest schools in the Netherlands. Its history dates back to the Middle Ages. The Stedelijk Gymnasium Leiden is the biggest gymnasium-only school ...

in 1942. His study of Mathematics at

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince o ...

was delayed by a period in hiding to evade enforced labor during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. He completed a degree in Mathematics with a minor in Mechanics in 1952. From 1949 onwards, he was a scientific assistant to J. Haantjes. He received private instruction in the combinatorial topology of fiber spaces in Brussels from G. Hirsch of the Agricultural University of Ghent in 1953. During this period he received a stipend from the Dutch-Belgian Cultural Accord. From 1954 to 1957 he taught mathematics at the Delft high school 'Gemeentelijke Hogere Burgerschool HBS'. In 1959 he completed his PhD thesis at Leiden University. W. T. van Est acted as his supervisor, once the original supervisor J. Haantjes was deceased.

Career

From 1957 to 1967 he worked as a lecturer at the 'Technische Hogeschool' of

Eindhoven Eindhoven () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, located in the southern province of North Brabant of which it is its largest. With a population of 238,326 on 1 January 2022,Eindhoven University of Technology). From 1967 to his retirement in 1989, he worked as a lecturer at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Amsterdam, teaching

discrete mathematics Discrete mathematics is the study of mathematical structures that can be considered "discrete" (in a way analogous to discrete variables, having a bijection with the set of natural numbers) rather than "continuous" (analogously to continuous f ...

and mathematics for students in Econometrics. Laman regarded himself mostly as a teacher. Clear thinking, as well as brevity in speech and writing, were his forte. Laman is often credited with proving, in 1970, that a particular family of sparse graphs, since named

Laman graph In graph theory, the Laman graphs are a family of sparse graphs describing the minimally rigid systems of rods and joints in the plane. Formally, a Laman graph is a graph on ''n'' vertices such that, for all ''k'', every ''k''-vertex subgraph has ...

s, are precisely those that are minimally generically rigid in the plane. This result, however, had already been proven by Hilda Geiringer back in 1927.. Laman's original publication in 1970 went largely unnoticed at first. Only when Branko Grünbaum and G. C. Shephard wrote about Laman's paper in their Lectures on lost mathematics did this work receive more attention. Towards the end of his life, Laman worked to lift the original 'Laman graph' from its original two dimensions to three, inspired by a simple counterexample, the 'double banana graph'.

Notes

References

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Laman, Gerard Dutch mathematicians People from Leiden Leiden University alumni Academic staff of the Eindhoven University of Technology Academic staff of the University of Amsterdam 1924 births 2009 deaths