Pavol Hell is a Canadian

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 ...

and

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

, born in Czechoslovakia. He is a professor of computing science at

Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located from ...

. Hell started his mathematical studies at

Charles University ) , image_name = Carolinum_Logo.svg , image_size = 200px , established = , type = Public, Ancient , budget = 8.9 billion CZK , rector = Milena Králíčková , faculty = 4,057 , administrative_staff = 4,026 , students = 51,438 , undergr ...

in Prague, and moved to Canada in August 1968 after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He obtained his MSc from

McMaster University McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood and Westdale, adjacent to the Royal Botanical Ga ...

in Hamilton, under the joint supervision of Gert Sabidussi and Alex Rosa, and his PhD at the Universite de Montreal, with Gert Sabidussi. In his PhD research he pioneered, on the suggestion of Gert Sabidussi, the study of graph retracts. He describes his area of interest as "computational combinatorics", including

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specificat ...

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 conne ...

and complexity of graph problems. His current focus is on nicely structured graph classes, and on the complexity of various versions of

graph homomorphism In the mathematical field of graph theory, a graph homomorphism is a mapping between two graphs that respects their structure. More concretely, it is a function between the vertex sets of two graphs that maps adjacent vertices to adjacent verti ...

problems. Hell has written the book ''Graph and Homomorphisms'' with his long-term collaborator

Jaroslav Nešetřil Jaroslav (Jarik) Nešetřil (; born March 13, 1946 in Brno) is a Czech mathematician, working at Charles University in Prague. His research areas include combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counti ...

, and many highly cited papers, including "On the complexity of H-coloring" also with Nešetřil, "On the history of the minimum spanning tree problem", with Ron Graham, "On the completeness of a generalized matching problem" with David Kirkpatrick, and "List homomorphisms and circular arc graphs" with Tomas Feder and Jing Huang. He is a managing editor of the ''Journal of Graph Theory'', and was named a

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 ...

of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in 2012.Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in 2012
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References

External links

at DBLP
Journal of Graph Theory
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hell, Pavol Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Czech mathematicians Czech computer scientists Canadian mathematicians Canadian computer scientists Graph theorists McMaster University alumni Université de Montréal alumni Academic staff of Simon Fraser University Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics