Gert Sabidussi (born 28 October 1929 in

Graz Graz (; sl, Gradec) is the capital city of the Austrian state of Styria and second-largest city in Austria after Vienna. As of 1 January 2021, it had a population of 331,562 (294,236 of whom had principal-residence status). In 2018, the popul ...

- 1 April 2022) is an

Austrian Austrian may refer to: * Austrians, someone from Austria or of Austrian descent ** Someone who is considered an Austrian citizen, see Austrian nationality law * Austrian German dialect * Something associated with the country Austria, for example: ...

mathematician specializing in

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 graph theory.

Biography

Sabidussi was born in

, Austria. His family later moved to

Innsbruck Innsbruck (; bar, Innschbruck, label=Bavarian language, Austro-Bavarian ) is the capital of Tyrol (state), Tyrol and the List of cities and towns in Austria, fifth-largest city in Austria. On the Inn (river), River Inn, at its junction with the ...

where his father was a Protestant deacon. He graduated from the University of Vienna, where he attended lectured by

Felix Ehrenhaft Felix Ehrenhaft (24 April 1879 – 4 March 1952) was an Austrian physicist who contributed to atomic physics, to the measurement of electrical charges and to the optical properties of metal colloids. He was known for his maverick and controversial ...

Nikolaus Hofreiter Nikolaus Hofreiter (8 May 1904 – 23 January 1990) was an Austrian mathematician who worked mainly in number theory. Biography Hofreiter went to school in Linz and studied from 1923 in Vienna with Hans Hahn (mathematician), Hans Hahn, Wilhelm Wi ...

, Johann Radon and Hans Thirring. In 1953, he defended his doctorate on 0-1 matrices under the supervision of

Edmund Hlawka Edmund Hlawka (November 5, 1916, Bruck an der Mur, Styria – February 19, 2009) was an Austrian mathematician. He was a leading number theorist. Hlawka did most of his work at the Vienna University of Technology. He was also a visiting professo ...

and received a two-year fellowship at Princeton University. He was then an Instructor at University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, but because of the heavy teaching load moved a year later, in 1956, to Tulane University in New Orleans. He moved to Montreal in 1963, and was instrumental in bringing to Canada a number of combinatorialists and graph theorists, including Anton Kotzig, and Jaroslav Nešetřil who wrote a thesis under Sabidussi. He first worked at McMaster University and then at University of Montreal. Over the years, he had 13 graduate students. His 60th, 70th and 80th birthdays were celebrated with large Graph Theory birthday conferences.

Mathematical work

Sabidussi wrote foundational work on Cayley graphs,

graph product In graph theory, a graph product is a binary operation on Graph (discrete mathematics), graphs. Specifically, it is an operation that takes two graphs and and produces a graph with the following properties: * The vertex (graph theory), vertex ...

s and Frucht's theorem.

References

Sabidussi's Biography
(in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

)

External links

Gert Sabidussi Web Page
at Université de Montréal. *
Algebraic Graph Theory 2009
a Conference in celebration of Gert Sabidussi's 80th birthday. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sabidussi, Gert 1929 births Scientists from Graz Living people 20th-century Austrian mathematicians 21st-century Canadian mathematicians Graph theorists Academic staff of the Université de Montréal University of Vienna alumni Austrian emigrants to Canada