Paul Eugene Schupp (born March 12, 1937, died January 24, 2022) was a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

emeritus of mathematics at the

University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

. He is known for his contributions to

geometric group theory Geometric group theory is an area in mathematics devoted to the study of finitely generated groups via exploring the connections between algebraic properties of such group (mathematics), groups and topology, topological and geometry, geometric pro ...

, computational complexity and the theory of computability. He received his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in 1966 under the direction of

Roger Lyndon Roger Conant Lyndon (December 18, 1917 – June 8, 1988) was an American mathematician, for many years a professor at the University of Michigan.. He is known for Lyndon words, the Curtis–Hedlund–Lyndon theorem, Craig–Lyndon interpolation a ...

. Together with

he is the coauthor of the book "Combinatorial Group Theory" which provided a comprehensive account of the subject of Combinatorial Group Theory, starting with the work of Dehn in the 1910s and to late 1970s and remains a modern standard for the subject of

small cancellation theory In the mathematical subject of group theory, small cancellation theory studies groups given by group presentations satisfying small cancellation conditions, that is where defining relations have "small overlaps" with each other. Small cancellation ...

. Starting 1980's he worked on problems that explored the connections between

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 ...

and

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

and Complexity Theory. Together with David Muller he proved that a

finitely generated group In algebra, a finitely generated group is a group ''G'' that has some finite generating set ''S'' so that every element of ''G'' can be written as the combination (under the group operation) of finitely many elements of ''S'' and of inverses o ...

''G'' has context-free word problem if and only if ''G'' is virtually free, which is now known as Muller–Schupp theorem.David E. Muller, and Paul E. Schupp
''Groups, the theory of ends, and context-free languages''.
Journal of Computer and System Sciences 26 (1983), no. 3, 295–310 In 1977, Schupp received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2012, he was named an inaugural 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, ...

. In 2017, the conference "Groups and Computation" was organized at Stevens Institute of Technology celebrating the mathematical contributions of Paul Schupp.

References

External links

Paul Schupp at Google ScholarGroups and Computation: Interactions between geometric group theory, computability and computer science
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schupp, Paul University of Michigan alumni 20th-century American mathematicians University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty 21st-century American mathematicians People from Cleveland Group theorists 1937 births Living people Fellows of the American Mathematical Society