Neil J. Calkin (born 29 March 1961) is a professor at

Clemson University Clemson University () is a public land-grant research university in Clemson, South Carolina. Founded in 1889, Clemson is the second-largest university in the student population in South Carolina. For the fall 2019 semester, the university enro ...

in the Algebra and Discrete Mathematics group of the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences. His interests are in combinatorial and probabilistic methods, mainly as applied to

number theory Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic function, integer-valued functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777� ...

. Together with

Herbert Wilf Herbert Saul Wilf (June 13, 1931 – January 7, 2012) was a mathematician, specializing in combinatorics and graph theory. He was the Thomas A. Scott Professor of Mathematics in Combinatorial Analysis and Computing at the University of Pennsylv ...

he founded

The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics The ''Electronic Journal of Combinatorics'' is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering research in combinatorial mathematics. The journal was established in 1994 by Herbert Wilf (University of Pennsylvania) and Neil Calkin ( G ...

in 1994. He and Wilf developed the

Calkin–Wilf tree In number theory, the Calkin–Wilf tree is a tree in which the vertices correspond one-to-one to the positive rational numbers. The tree is rooted at the number 1, and any rational number expressed in simplest terms as the fraction has as its ...

and the associated Calkin–Wilf sequence.

Biography

Neil Calkin was born 29 March 1961, in

Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...

and moved to the UK around the age of 3. He grew up there and studied mathematics at Trinity College Cambridge before moving to Canada in 1984 to study in the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization at the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality ...

where he was awarded a PhD (1988) for his thesis "Sum-Free Sets and Measure Spaces" written under the supervision of Ian Peter Goulden. He was the

Zeev Nehari Zeev Nehari (born Willi Weissbach; 2 February 1915 – 1978) was a mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned w ...

Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

(1988—1991), an assistant professor at

Georgia Tech The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part of ...

(1991—1997), and joined the Algebra and Discrete Mathematics group of the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences at Clemson University in 1997. Calkin has an Erdös number of 1. He was one of the last people to collaborate with

Erdős Erdős, Erdos, or Erdoes is a Hungarian surname. People with the surname include: * Ágnes Erdős (born 1950), Hungarian politician * Brad Erdos (born 1990), Canadian football player * Éva Erdős (born 1964), Hungarian handball player * Józse ...

and once said of him, "One of my greatest regrets is that I didn't know him when he was a million times faster than most people. When I knew him he was only hundreds of times faster."''My Brain Is Open : The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos'' (1998) by Bruce Schechter, p. 119

Selected papers

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Books

References

External links

Neil Calkin at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

{{DEFAULTSORT:Calkin, Neil 20th-century English mathematicians 21st-century English mathematicians Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge University of Waterloo alumni Clemson University faculty Combinatorial game theorists Recreational mathematicians Mathematics popularizers Combinatorialists Probability theorists Number theorists 1961 births Living people