Jeffrey Howard Dinitz (born 1952) is an American

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 ...

who taught

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 ...

at the

University of Vermont The University of Vermont (UVM), officially the University of Vermont and State Agricultural College, is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Burlington, Vermont. It was founded in 1791 and is amon ...

. He is best known for proposing the

Dinitz conjecture In combinatorics, the Dinitz theorem (formerly known as Dinitz conjecture) is a statement about the extension of arrays to partial Latin squares, proposed in 1979 by Jeff Dinitz, and proved in 1994 by Fred Galvin. The Dinitz theorem is that given ...

, which became a major theorem. Dinitz is married to Susan Dinitz and has three children, Mike, Amy, and Tom.

XFL scheduling

Dinitz is also well known for scheduling the first season of the now-defunct

XFL XFL may refer to: Sports * XFL (2001), a defunct American football league that played its only season in 2001 * XFL (2020), a professional American football league Vehicles * Bell XFL Airabonita, a 1940 U.S. Navy experimental interceptor aircra ...

football league. He and a colleague from the Czech Republic, Dalibor Froncek, offered the then-brand-new XFL league their expertise to draft complicated schedules. The XFL administration quickly agreed, which "surprised" Dinitz greatly. After some time on the computer, Dinitz and Froncek sent the XFL a draft schedule, and the new league gratefully accepted. Although the XFL folded after only one season, Dinitz was happy that "(he and Froncek) got to go to the championship game in Los Angeles"..

Bibliography

* ''Handbook of Combinatorial Designs, Second Edition'' by Charles J. Colbourn and Jeffrey H. Dinitz, 2006 * ''CRC Handbook of Combinatorial Designs'' by Charles J. Colbourn and Jeffrey H. Dinitz, 1996 * ''Contemporary Design Theory: A Collection of Surveys'' by Jeffrey H. Dinitz and Douglas R. Stinson, 1992

References

External links

Home Page at University of Vermont

* 1952 births Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Ohio State University alumni {{US-academic-scientist-stub