__NOTOC__ Neil James Alexander Sloane (born October 10, 1939) is a British-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 ...

. His major contributions are in the fields of

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 ...

error-correcting code In computing, telecommunication, information theory, and coding theory, an error correction code, sometimes error correcting code, (ECC) is used for controlling errors in data over unreliable or noisy communication channels. The central idea is ...

s, and

sphere packing In geometry, a sphere packing is an arrangement of non-overlapping spheres within a containing space. The spheres considered are usually all of identical size, and the space is usually three-dimensional Euclidean space. However, sphere packing p ...

. Sloane is best known for being the creator and maintainer of the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS).

Biography

Sloane was born in

Beaumaris, Anglesey Beaumaris ( ; cy, Biwmares ) is a town and community on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales, of which it is the former county town of Anglesey. It is located at the eastern entrance to the Menai Strait, the tidal waterway separating Anglesey from ...

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

, in 1939, moving to Cowes,

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight ( ) is a county in the English Channel, off the coast of Hampshire, from which it is separated by the Solent. It is the largest and second-most populous island of England. Referred to as 'The Island' by residents, the Isle of ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

in 1946. The family emigrated to

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, arriving at the start of 1949. Sloane then moved from

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

in 1961. He studied at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

under Nick DeClaris, Frank Rosenblatt,

Frederick Jelinek Frederick Jelinek (18 November 1932 – 14 September 2010) was a Czech-American researcher in information theory, automatic speech recognition, and natural language processing. He is well known for his oft-quoted statement, "Every time I fire a ...

and

Wolfgang Heinrich Johannes Fuchs Wolfgang Heinrich Johannes Fuchs (May 19, 1915, Munich – February 24, 1997) was a British mathematician specializing in complex analysis. His main area of research was Nevanlinna theory. Fuchs received his Ph.D. in 1941 from the University of C ...

, receiving his Ph.D. in 1967. His doctoral dissertation was titled ''Lengths of Cycle Times in Random

Neural Network A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...

s''. Sloane joined AT&T Bell Labs in 1968 and retired from

AT&T Labs AT&T Labs is the research & development division of AT&T, the telecommunications company. It employs some 1,800 people in various locations, including: Bedminster NJ; Middletown, NJ; Manhattan, NY; Warrenville, IL; Austin, TX; Dallas, TX; Atlan ...

in 2012. He became an AT&T

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

in 1998. He is also a

Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales The Learned Society of Wales (Welsh: Cymdeithas Ddysgedig Cymru) is a learned society and charity that exists to "celebrate, recognise, preserve, protect and encourage excellence in all of the scholarly disciplines", and to serve the Welsh nation ...

, an IEEE Fellow, 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, ...

, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He is a winner of a Lester R. Ford Award in 1978 and the

Chauvenet Prize The Chauvenet Prize is the highest award for mathematical expository writing. It consists of a prize of $1,000 and a certificate, and is awarded yearly by the Mathematical Association of America in recognition of an outstanding expository article ...

in 1979. In 1998 he was an Invited Speaker of the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize (to be rename ...

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

. In 2005 Sloane received the

IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal The IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal is presented annually to up to three persons, for outstanding achievements in information sciences, information systems and information technology. The recipients receive a gold medal, together with a replica in ...

. In 2008 he received the

Mathematical Association of America The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure a ...

David P. Robbins Prize The David P. Robbins Prize for papers reporting novel research in algebra, combinatorics, or discrete mathematics is awarded both by the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). The AMS award reco ...

, and in 2013 the

George Pólya Award The George Pólya Award is presented annually by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) for articles of expository excellence that have been published in The College Mathematics Journal. The award was established in 1976 and up to two aw ...

. In 2014, to celebrate his 75th birthday, Sloane shared some of his favorite integer sequences. Besides mathematics, he loves

rock climbing Rock climbing is a sport in which participants climb up, across, or down natural rock formations. The goal is to reach the summit of a formation or the endpoint of a usually pre-defined route without falling. Rock climbing is a physically and ...

and has authored two rock-climbing guides to

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

. He regularly appears in videos for Brady Haran's Youtube channel

Numberphile ''Numberphile'' is an educational YouTube channel featuring videos that explore topics from a variety of fields of mathematics. In the early days of the channel, each video focused on a specific number, but the channel has since expanded its s ...

Selected publications

*Neil James Alexander Sloane, A Handbook of Integer Sequences, Academic Press, NY, 1973. * Florence Jessie MacWilliams and Neil James Alexander Sloane, The Theory of Error-Correcting Codes, Elsevier/North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1977. (xxii+762+6 pages) *M. Harwit and Neil James Alexander Sloane, Hadamard Transform Optics, Academic Press, San Diego CA, 1979. *Neil James Alexander Sloane and A. D. Wyner, editors,

Claude Elwood Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as a "father of information theory". As a 21-year-old master's degree student at the Massachusetts Institu ...

: Collected Papers, IEEE Press, NY, 1993. *Neil James Alexander Sloane and

S. Plouffe Simon Plouffe (born June 11, 1956) is a mathematician who discovered the Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe formula (BBP algorithm) which permits the computation of the ''n''th binary digit of π, in 1995. His other 2022 formula allows extracting the ''n ...

, The Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, Academic Press, San Diego, 1995. *

J. H. Conway John Horton Conway (26 December 1937 – 11 April 2020) was an English mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many branches ...

and Neil James Alexander Sloane, Sphere Packings, Lattices and Groups, Springer-Verlag, NY, 1st edn., 1988; 2nd edn., 1993; 3rd ed., 1998. *A. S. Hedayat, Neil James Alexander Sloane and J. Stufken, Orthogonal Arrays: Theory and Applications, Springer-Verlag, NY, 1999. * G. Nebe, E. M. Rains and Neil James Alexander Sloane, Self-Dual Codes and Invariant Theory, Springer-Verlag, 2006.

References

External links

* * IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal Recipients
2005 – Neil J. A. Sloane
* Neil Sloane's entry in th

"The pattern collector"
Science News * Doron Zeilberger

* ttps://oeis.org/A195264/a195264.pdf Confessions of a Sequence Addict Neil Sloane {{DEFAULTSORT:Sloane, Neil 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Combinatorialists 1939 births Living people Scientists at Bell Labs Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Cornell University alumni University of Melbourne alumni Fellow Members of the IEEE People from Beaumaris

Biography

Selected publications

See also

References

External links