Imre Bárány (Mátyásföld,

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

, 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, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

, working in combinatorics 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 ge ...

. He works at the Rényi Mathematical Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and has a part-time appointment at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

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 wa ...

's theorem on

Kneser graph In graph theory, the Kneser graph (alternatively ) is the graph whose vertices correspond to the -element subsets of a set of elements, and where two vertices are adjacent if and only if the two corresponding sets are disjoint. Kneser graphs a ...

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 are ...

. * Bárány gave a colored version of Carathéodory's theorem. * He solved an old problem of James Joseph Sylvester 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) establishes that, in many situations, when independent random variables are summed up, their properly normalized sum tends toward a normal distribution even if the original variables themsel ...

on random points in convex bodies. * 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 Hunga ...

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 algorithm determines the volume of convex bodies in dimension ''d'' within a multiplicative error ''d''^''d''. * With Füredi and János Pach he proved the following six circle conjecture of

László Fejes Tóth László Fejes Tóth ( hu, Fejes Tóth László, 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 th ...

: 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 de ...

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 Se ...

) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1985. He was an invited speaker at the Combinatorics session of the International Congress of Mathematicians, in

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

, 2002. He was an Erdős Lecturer at Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2004. He was elected a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2010). 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, ...

. 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. It started in 1981, with László Babai and László Lovász as the editors-in-chief with Paul Erdős as honora ...

'', 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''.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