Ingo Wegener (December 4, 1950 in

Bremen Bremen (Low German also: ''Breem'' or ''Bräm''), officially the City Municipality of Bremen (german: Stadtgemeinde Bremen, ), is the capital of the German state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (''Freie Hansestadt Bremen''), a two-city-state consis ...

– November 26, 2008 in

Bielefeld Bielefeld () is a city in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population of 341,755, it is also the most populous city in the administrative region (''Regierungsbezirk'') of Detmold and the ...

) was an influential German computer scientist working in the field of

theoretical computer science Theoretical computer science (TCS) is a subset of general computer science and mathematics that focuses on mathematical aspects of computer science such as the theory of computation, lambda calculus, and type theory. It is difficult to circumsc ...

Education and career

Wegener was educated at the

Bielefeld University Bielefeld University (german: Universität Bielefeld) is a university in Bielefeld, Germany. Founded in 1969, it is one of the country's newer universities, and considers itself a "reform" university, following a different style of organization ...

. He earned a diploma in mathematics there in 1976, a doctorate in 1978, and a

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

in 1981. His doctoral dissertation, ''Boolesche Funktionen, deren monotone Komplexität fast quadratisch ist'', was jointly supervised by and

Rudolf Ahlswede Rudolf F. Ahlswede (15 September 1938 – 18 December 2010) was a German mathematician. Born in Dielmissen, Germany, he studied mathematics, physics, and philosophy. He wrote his Ph.D. thesis in 1966, at the University of Göttingen, with the ...

. He was a computer science professor at

Goethe University Frankfurt Goethe University (german: link=no, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) is a university located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was founded in 1914 as a citizens' university, which means it was founded and funded by the wealt ...

from 1980 until 1987, when he moved to the

Technical University of Dortmund TU Dortmund University (german: Technische Universität Dortmund) is a technical university in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany with over 35,000 students, and over 6,000 staff including 300 professors, offering around 80 Bachelor's an ...

. He remained at Dortmund until his death.

Contributions

Wegener's dissertation research concerned

circuit complexity In theoretical computer science, circuit complexity is a branch of computational complexity theory in which Boolean functions are classified according to the size or depth of the Boolean circuits that compute them. A related notion is the circui ...

, and he was known for his research on

Boolean function In mathematics, a Boolean function is a function whose arguments and result assume values from a two-element set (usually , or ). Alternative names are switching function, used especially in older computer science literature, and truth function ( ...

s and

binary decision diagram In computer science, a binary decision diagram (BDD) or branching program is a data structure that is used to represent a Boolean function. On a more abstract level, BDDs can be considered as a compressed representation of sets or relations. ...

s. He wrote two books on related topics, ''The Complexity of Boolean Functions'' (Wiley, 1987, also called "the blue book") and ''Branching Programs and Binary Decision Diagrams: Theory and Applications'' (SIAM Press, 2000). Beginning in the 1990s, his research interests shifted towards the theoretical analysis of

metaheuristic In computer science and mathematical optimization, a metaheuristic is a higher-level procedure or heuristic designed to find, generate, or select a heuristic (partial search algorithm) that may provide a sufficiently good solution to an optimizati ...

s and evolutionary computation.

Awards and honors

Wegener was elected as a fellow of the German society for computer science, the

Gesellschaft für Informatik The German Informatics Society (GI) (german: Gesellschaft für Informatik) is a German professional society for computer science, with around 20,000 personal and 250 corporate members. It is the biggest organized representation of its kind in the ...

, in 2004. For his merits on teaching and research in the field of theoretical computer science, he earned in 2006 the

Konrad Zuse Medal The Konrad Zuse Medal for Services to Computer Science is the highest award of the (German Computer Science Society), given every two years to one or sometimes two leading German computer scientists. It is named after German computer pioneer Konra ...

from the Gesellschaft für Informatik.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wegener, Ingo 1950 births German computer scientists 2008 deaths Bielefeld University alumni Goethe University Frankfurt faculty Technical University of Dortmund faculty