Péter Frankl (born 26 March 1953 in

Kaposvár Kaposvár (; also known by other alternative names) is a city with county rights in the southwestern part of Hungary, south of Lake Balaton. It is one of the leading cities of Transdanubia, the capital of Somogy County, and the seat of the Kaposvá ...

Somogy County Somogy ( hu, Somogy megye, ; hr, Šomođska županija; sl, Šomodska županija, german: Komitat Schomodei) is an administrative county (comitatus or ''megye'') in present Hungary, and also in the former Kingdom of Hungary. Somogy County lies ...

, Hungary) is a

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 ...

street performer Street performance or busking is the act of performing in public places for gratuities. In many countries, the rewards are generally in the form of money but other gratuities such as food, drink or gifts may be given. Street performance is pr ...

, columnist and educator, active in Japan. Frankl studied Mathematics at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and submitted his PhD thesis while still an undergraduate. He holds PhD degree from

University Paris Diderot Paris Diderot University, also known as Paris 7 (french: Université Paris Diderot), was a French university located in Paris, France. It was one of the inheritors of the historic University of Paris, which was split into 13 universities in 197 ...

as well. He has lived in Japan since 1988, where he is a well-known personality and often appears in the media. He keeps travelling around Japan performing ( juggling and giving public lectures on various topics). Frankl won a gold medal at the

International Mathematical Olympiad The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is a mathematical olympiad for pre-university students, and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. It has since been held annually, except i ...

in 1971. He has seven joint papers with

Paul Erdős Paul Erdős ( hu, Erdős Pál ; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. pursued and proposed problems in ...

, and eleven joint papers with Ronald Graham. His research is in

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 ...

, especially in

extremal combinatorics Extremal combinatorics is a field of combinatorics, which is itself a part of mathematics. Extremal combinatorics studies how large or how small a collection of finite objects (numbers, graphs, vectors, sets, etc.) can be, if it has to satisfy ce ...

. He is the author of the

union-closed sets conjecture The union-closed sets conjecture is an open problem in combinatorics posed by Péter Frankl in 1979. A family of sets is said to be ''union-closed'' if the union of any two sets from the family belongs to the family. The conjecture states: For e ...

Personality

Both of his parents were survivors of concentration camps and taught him "The only things you own are in your heart and brain". So he became a mathematician. Frankl often lectures about racial discrimination.

Adolescence and abilities

He could multiply two digit numbers when he was four years old. Frankl speaks 12 languages (Hungarian, English, Russian, Swedish, French, Spanish, Polish, German, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Korean) and lectured mathematics in many countries in these languages. He has travelled to more than 100 countries.

Activities

Frankl learnt juggling from Ronald Graham. He and Rödl solved a $1000 problem of Paul Erdős. Zsolt Baranyai helped Frankl to get a scholarship in France, where he became a CNRS research fellow. For 1984 to 1990, Frankl and Akiyama worked hard organizing a Japanese mathematical Olympic team, and as a consequence the Japanese team is now a regular participant of the

. Since 1998, he is an external member of the

Hungarian Academy of Sciences The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( hu, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, MTA) is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. Its ma ...

. He authored more than thirty books in Japanese, and with Babai they wrote the manuscript of a book on "Linear Algebra Methods in Combinatorics". With Norihide Tokushige he is the coauthor of the book '' Extremal Problems For Finite Sets'' (American Mathematical Society, 2018).Reviews of ''Extremal Problems For Finite Sets'': * * *

Frankl conjecture

For any finite union-closed family of finite sets, other than the family consisting only of the empty set, there exists an element that belongs to at least half of the sets in the family.

References

External links