László Pyber
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''László Pyber'' (born 8 May 1960 in
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 ...
) 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 ...
. He is a researcher at the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, Budapest. He works in combinatorics and
group theory In abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as group (mathematics), groups. The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as ring (mathematics), rings, field ...
.


Biography

Pyber received his Ph.D. from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1989 under the direction 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 ...
and Gyula O.H. Katona with the thesis ''Extremal Structures and Covering Problems.'' In 2007, he was awarded the Academics Prize by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2017, he was the recipient of an ERC Advanced Grant.


Mathematical contributions

Pyber has solved a number of conjectures in
graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conn ...
. In 1985, he proved the conjecture of Paul Erdős and
Tibor Gallai Tibor Gallai (born Tibor Grünwald, 15 July 1912 – 2 January 1992) was a Hungarian mathematician. He worked in combinatorics, especially in graph theory, and was a lifelong friend and collaborator of Paul Erdős. He was a student of Dénes K ...
that edges of a simple graph with ''n'' vertices can be covered with at most ''n-1'' circuits and edges. In 1986, he proved the conjecture of Paul Erdős that a graph with ''n'' vertices and its complement can be covered with ''n''2/4+2
cliques A clique ( AusE, CanE, or ), in the social sciences, is a group of individuals who interact with one another and share similar interests. Interacting with cliques is part of normative social development regardless of gender, ethnicity, or popular ...
. He has also contributed to the study of permutation groups. In 1993, he provided an upper bound for the order of a 2-transitive group of degree ''n'' not containing '' An'' avoiding the use of the
classification of finite simple groups In mathematics, the classification of the finite simple groups is a result of group theory stating that every finite simple group is either cyclic, or alternating, or it belongs to a broad infinite class called the groups of Lie type, or else i ...
. Together with Tomasz Łuczak, Pyber proved the conjecture of
McKay McKay, MacKay or Mackay is a Scottish / Irish surname. The last phoneme in the name is traditionally pronounced to rhyme with 'eye', but in some parts of the world this has come to rhyme with 'hey'. In Scotland, it corresponds to Clan Mackay. No ...
that for every ''ε>0,'' there is a constant ''C'' such that ''C'' randomly chosen elements invariably generate the
symmetric group In abstract algebra, the symmetric group defined over any set is the group whose elements are all the bijections from the set to itself, and whose group operation is the composition of functions. In particular, the finite symmetric group ...
''S''''n'' with probability greater than ''1-ε''. Pyber has made fundamental contributions in enumerating finite groups of a given order ''n''. In 1993, he proved that if the prime power decomposition of ''n'' is ''n''=''p''1''g''1 ⋯ ''p''''k''''g''''k'' and ''μ=''max(''g''1,...,''g''k), then the number of groups of order ''n'' is at mostIn 2004, Pyber settled several questions in
subgroup growth In mathematics, subgroup growth is a branch of group theory, dealing with quantitative questions about subgroups of a given group. Let G be a finitely generated group. Then, for each integer n define a_n(G) to be the number of subgroups H of inde ...
by completing the investigation of the spectrum of possible subgroup growth types. In 2011, Pyber and Andrei Jaikin-Zapirain obtained a surprisingly explicit formula for the number of random elements needed to generate a finite ''d''-generator group with high probability. They also explored related questions for profinite groups and settled several open problems. In 2016, Pyber and Endre Szabó proved that in a
finite simple group Finite is the opposite of infinite. It may refer to: * Finite number (disambiguation) * Finite set, a set whose cardinality (number of elements) is some natural number * Finite verb, a verb form that has a subject, usually being inflected or marked ...
''L'' of Lie type, a generating set ''A'' of ''L'' either grows, i.e., '', A3, '' ≥ '', A, 1+ε'' for some ''ε'' depending only on the Lie rank of ''L'', or ''A3=L''. This implies that diameters of
Cayley graph In mathematics, a Cayley graph, also known as a Cayley color graph, Cayley diagram, group diagram, or color group is a graph that encodes the abstract structure of a group. Its definition is suggested by Cayley's theorem (named after Arthur Cay ...
s of finite simple groups of bounded rank are polylogarithmic in the size of the group, partially resolving a well-known conjecture of
László Babai László "Laci" Babai (born July 20, 1950, in Budapest) a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and won the Knuth Prize. Babai was an invited speaker at the International Congresses of Mathematicians in Kyoto (1990), Zürich (1994, ...
.


References


External links

*Pyber'
home page
*Pyber'
nomination
for Hungarian Academy of Sciences membership * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pyber, Laszlo Combinatorialists Group theorists 20th-century Hungarian mathematicians 21st-century Hungarian mathematicians Living people 1960 births