Joel Spencer (born April 20, 1946) 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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
. He is a
combinatorialist who has worked on
probabilistic
Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1, where, roughly speaking, ...
methods in combinatorics and on
Ramsey theory
Ramsey theory, named after the British mathematician and philosopher Frank P. Ramsey, is a branch of mathematics that focuses on the appearance of order in a substructure given a structure of a known size. Problems in Ramsey theory typically ask ...
. He received his doctorate from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
in 1970, under the supervision of
Andrew Gleason. He is currently () a professor at the
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as Courant or CIMS) is the mathematics research school of New York University (NYU), and is among the most prestigious mathematics schools and mathematical sciences research cente ...
of
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, ...
. Spencer's work was heavily influenced by
Paul Erdős, with whom he coauthored many papers (giving him an
Erdős number of 1).
In 1963, while studying at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...
, Spencer became a
Putnam Fellow.
In 1984 Spencer received a
Lester R. Ford Award. He was an
Erdős Lecturer at
Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2001. 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 was elected as a fellow of the
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific soci ...
in 2017, "for contributions to discrete mathematics and theory of computing, particularly random graphs and networks, Ramsey theory, logic, and randomized algorithms". In 2021 he received the
Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition with his coauthor
Noga Alon for their book ''The Probabilistic Method''.
Leroy P. Steele Prize 2021
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Selected publications
* ''Probabilistic methods in combinatorics'', with Paul Erdős, New York: Academic Press, 1974.
* ''Ramsey theory'', with Bruce L. Rothschild and Ronald L. Graham
Ronald Lewis Graham (October 31, 1935July 6, 2020) was an American mathematician credited by the American Mathematical Society as "one of the principal architects of the rapid development worldwide of discrete mathematics in recent years". H ...
, New York: Wiley, 1980; 2nd ed., 1990.
* ''Ten lectures on the probabilistic method'', Philadelphia: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 1987; 2nd ed., 1994.
* ''The strange logic of random graphs
''The Strange Logic of Random Graphs'' is a book on zero-one laws for random graphs. It was written by Joel Spencer and published in 2001 by Springer-Verlag as volume 22 of their book series Algorithms and Combinatorics.
Topics
The random graphs ...
'', Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2001.
* ''The probabilistic method'', with Noga Alon, New York: Wiley, 1992; 2nd ed., 2000; 3rd ed., 2008.
* ''Deterministic random walks on regular trees'', American Mathematical Society, New York, 2008.
* ''Asymptopia'', with Laura Florescu, American Mathematical Society, 2014.
See also
* Packing in a hypergraph
References
External links
Joel Spencer's Website
1946 births
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
Living people
Harvard University alumni
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences faculty
Graph theorists
Putnam Fellows
Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
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