Herbert Saul Wilf (June 13, 1931 – January 7, 2012) was a 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 a ...
and
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 conn ...
. He was the
Thomas A. Scott Professor of Mathematics in Combinatorial Analysis and Computing at the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...
. He wrote numerous books and research papers. Together with
Neil Calkin
Neil J. Calkin (born 29 March 1961) is a professor at Clemson University in the Algebra and Discrete Mathematics group of the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences. His interests are in combinatorial and probabilistic methods, mainly ...
he founded ''
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 ( G ...
'' in 1994 and was its editor-in-chief until 2001.
Biography
Wilf was the author of numerous papers and books, and was adviser and mentor to many students and colleagues. His collaborators include
Doron Zeilberger
Doron Zeilberger (דורון ציילברגר, born 2 July 1950 in Haifa, Israel) is an Israeli mathematician, known for his work in combinatorics.
Education and career
He received his doctorate from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1976, u ...
and
Donald Knuth
Donald Ervin Knuth ( ; born January 10, 1938) is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the 1974 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, informally considered the Nobel Prize of computer sc ...
. One of Wilf's former students is
Richard Garfield
Richard Channing Garfield (born June 26, 1963) is an American mathematician, inventor and game designer. Garfield created '' Magic: The Gathering'', which is considered to be the first collectible card game (CCG). ''Magic'' debuted in 1993 and it ...
, the creator of the
collectible card game
A collectible card game (CCG), also called a trading card game (TCG) among other names, is a type of card game that mixes strategy game, strategic deck building elements with features of trading cards, introduced with ''Magic: The Gathering'' in ...
''
Magic: The Gathering
''Magic: The Gathering'' (colloquially known as ''Magic'' or ''MTG'') is a Tabletop game, tabletop and Digital collectible card game, digital Collectible card game, collectable card game created by Richard Garfield. Released in 1993 by Wizards ...
''. He also served as a thesis advisor for
E. Roy Weintraub in the late 1960s.
Wilf died of a progressive
neuromuscular disease
A neuromuscular disease is any disease affecting the peripheral nervous system (PNS), the neuromuscular junction, or skeletal muscle, all of which are components of the motor unit. Damage to any of these structures can cause muscle atrophy and wea ...
in 2012.
Awards
In 1998, Wilf and Zeilberger received the
Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research for their joint paper, "Rational functions certify combinatorial identities" (''
Journal of the American Mathematical Society
The ''Journal of the American Mathematical Society'' (''JAMS''), is a quarterly peer-reviewed mathematical journal published by the American Mathematical Society. It was established in January 1988.
Abstracting and indexing
This journal is abs ...
'', 3 (1990) 147–158). The prize citation reads: "New mathematical ideas can have an impact on experts in a field, on people outside the field, and on how the field develops after the idea has been introduced. The remarkably simple idea of the work of Wilf and Zeilberger has already changed a part of mathematics for the experts, for the high-level users outside the area, and the area itself." Their work has been translated into computer packages that have simplified
hypergeometric summation.
In 2002, Wilf was awarded the
Euler Medal
The Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications (ICA) is an international scientific organization formed in 1990 to increase the visibility and influence of the combinatorial community. In pursuit of this goal, the ICA sponsors conferences, ...
by the
Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications
The Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications (ICA) is an international scientific organization formed in 1990 to increase the visibility and influence of the combinatorial community. In pursuit of this goal, the ICA sponsors conferences, ...
.
Selected publications
*
*
*
*
* 1971: (editor with
Frank Harary
Frank Harary (March 11, 1921 – January 4, 2005) was an American mathematician, who specialized in graph theory. He was widely recognized as one of the "fathers" of modern graph theory.
Harary was a master of clear exposition and, together wit ...
) ''Mathematical Aspects of Electrical Networks Analysis'', SIAM-AMS Proceedings, Volume 3,
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, meeting ...
* 1998: (with N. J. Calkin) "The Number of Independent Sets in a Grid Graph", ''
SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics
'' SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics'' is a peer-reviewed mathematics journal published quarterly by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). The journal includes articles on pure and applied discrete mathematics. It was estab ...
''
Books
''A=B''(with
Doron Zeilberger
Doron Zeilberger (דורון ציילברגר, born 2 July 1950 in Haifa, Israel) is an Israeli mathematician, known for his work in combinatorics.
Education and career
He received his doctorate from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1976, u ...
and
Marko Petkovšek
Marko Petkovšek is a Slovenian mathematician, born: 1955, working mainly in symbolic computation.
He is a professor of discrete and computational mathematics at the University of Ljubljana. He completed his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University
u ...
)
''Algorithms and Complexity''
* ''Combinatorial Algorithms'', with
Albert Nijenhuis
Lecture notes
''East Side, West Side''''Lectures on Integer Partitions''''Lecture Notes on Numerical Analysis''(with Dennis Deturck)
See also
*
Line graph
In the mathematical discipline of graph theory, the line graph of an undirected graph is another graph that represents the adjacencies between edges of . is constructed in the following way: for each edge in , make a vertex in ; for every ...
*
Calkin–Wilf tree
In number theory, the Calkin–Wilf tree is a tree in which the vertices correspond one-to-one to the positive rational numbers. The tree is rooted at the number 1, and any rational number expressed in simplest terms as the fraction has as its ...
*
Szekeres–Wilf number
*
Wilf–Zeilberger pair In mathematics, specifically combinatorics, a Wilf–Zeilberger pair, or WZ pair, is a pair of functions that can be used to certify certain combinatorial identities. ...
References
External links
Herbert Wilf's homepage*
*
The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilf, Herbert
1931 births
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
Combinatorialists
University of Pennsylvania faculty
Mathematicians at the University of Pennsylvania
2012 deaths
The American Mathematical Monthly editors
American textbook writers