Imre Bárány (Mátyásföld,

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

, 7 December 1947) is a Hungarian

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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

, working in

combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and as an end to obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many ...

and

discrete geometry Discrete geometry and combinatorial geometry are branches of geometry that study combinatorial properties and constructive methods of discrete geometric objects. Most questions in discrete geometry involve finite or discrete sets of basic geom ...

. He works at the Rényi Mathematical Institute of the

Hungarian Academy of Sciences The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( , MTA) is Hungary’s foremost and most prestigious learned society. Its headquarters are located along the banks of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. The Academy's primar ...

, and has a part-time appointment at

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

Notable results

* He gave a surprisingly simple alternative proof of

László Lovász László Lovász (; born March 9, 1948) is a Hungarian mathematician and professor emeritus at Eötvös Loránd University, best known for his work in combinatorics, for which he was awarded the 2021 Abel Prize jointly with Avi Wigderson. He ...

's theorem on

Kneser graph Kneser is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Adolf Kneser (1862–1930), mathematician * Hellmuth Kneser (1898–1973), mathematician, son of Adolf Kneser * Martin Kneser (1928–2004), mathematician, son of Hellm ...

s. * He gave a new proof of the

Borsuk–Ulam theorem In mathematics, the Borsuk–Ulam theorem states that every continuous function from an ''n''-sphere into Euclidean ''n''-space maps some pair of antipodal points to the same point. Here, two points on a sphere are called antipodal if they ar ...

. * Bárány gave a colored version of Carathéodory's theorem. * He solved an old problem of

James Joseph Sylvester James Joseph Sylvester (3 September 1814 – 15 March 1897) was an English mathematician. He made fundamental contributions to matrix theory, invariant theory, number theory, partition theory, and combinatorics. He played a leadership ...

on the probability of random point sets in convex position. * With Van H. Vu proved a

central limit theorem In probability theory, the central limit theorem (CLT) states that, under appropriate conditions, the Probability distribution, distribution of a normalized version of the sample mean converges to a Normal distribution#Standard normal distributi ...

on random points in

convex bodies In mathematics, a convex body in n-dimensional Euclidean space \R^n is a compact convex set with non- empty interior. Some authors do not require a non-empty interior, merely that the set is non-empty. A convex body K is called symmetric if it i ...

. * With

Zoltán Füredi Zoltán Füredi (Budapest, Hungary, 21 May 1954) is a Hungarian mathematician, working in combinatorics, mainly in discrete geometry and extremal combinatorics. He was a student of Gyula O. H. Katona. He is a corresponding member of the Hungari ...

he gave an algorithm for

mental poker Mental poker is the common name for a set of cryptographic problems that concerns playing a fair game over distance without the need for a trusted third party. The term is also applied to the theories surrounding these problems and their possible ...

. * With Füredi he proved that no deterministic

polynomial time In theoretical computer science, the time complexity is the computational complexity that describes the amount of computer time it takes to run an algorithm. Time complexity is commonly estimated by counting the number of elementary operations p ...

algorithm determines the volume of

in dimension ''d'' within a multiplicative error ''d''^''d''. * With Füredi and

János Pach János Pach (born May 3, 1954) is a mathematician and computer scientist working in the fields of combinatorics and discrete and computational geometry. Biography Pach was born and grew up in Hungary. He comes from a noted academic family: his f ...

he proved the following six circle conjecture of

László Fejes Tóth László Fejes Tóth (, ; 12 March 1915 – 17 March 2005) was a Hungarian mathematician who specialized in geometry. He proved that a lattice pattern is the most efficient way to pack centrally symmetric convex sets on the Euclidean plane (a ge ...

: if in a planar

circle packing In geometry, circle packing is the study of the arrangement of circles (of equal or varying sizes) on a given surface such that no overlapping occurs and so that no circle can be enlarged without creating an overlap. The associated ''packing den ...

each circle is tangent to at least 6 other circles, then either it is the hexagonal system of circles with identical radii, or there are circles with arbitrarily small radius.

Career

Bárány received the Mathematical Prize (now

Paul Erdős Prize The Paul Erdős Prize (formerly Mathematical Prize) is given to Hungarian mathematicians not older than 40 by the Mathematics Department of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. It was established and originally funded by Paul Erdős. Awardees See ...

) of the

in 1985. He was an invited speaker at the Combinatorics session of the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before ...

, in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

, 2002. He was an Erdős Lecturer at

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

in 2004. He was elected a corresponding (2010), full (2016) member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. 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, ...

. Since 2021, he is a member of the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

He is an editor-in-chief for the journal ''

Combinatorica ''Combinatorica'' is an international journal of mathematics, publishing papers in the fields of combinatorics and computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theore ...

'', and an Editorial Board member for ''

Mathematika ''Mathematika'' is a peer-reviewed mathematics journal that publishes both pure and applied mathematical articles. The journal was founded by Harold Davenport in the 1950s. The journal is published by the London Mathematical Society, on behalf of ...

'' and the ''Online Journal of Analytic Combinatorics". He is area editor of the journal ''

Mathematics of Operations Research ''Mathematics of Operations Research'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal established in February 1976. It focuses on areas of mathematics relevant to the field of operations research such as continuous optimization, discrete optimizat ...

''.Area editors
, Mathematics of Operations Research. Accessed April 5, 2010.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Barany, Imre Mathematicians from Budapest Academics of University College London Geometers 1947 births Living people Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Combinatorialists