Richard Michael Wilson (23 November 1945) is a mathematician and a professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology. Wilson and his PhD supervisor

Dijen K. Ray-Chaudhuri Dwijendra Kumar Ray-Chaudhuri (born November 1, 1933) is a professor emeritus at Ohio State University. He and his student R. M. Wilson together solved Kirkman's schoolgirl problem in 1968 which contributed to developments in combinatorial design, ...

, solved Kirkman's schoolgirl problem in 1968. Wilson is known for his work in combinatorial mathematics, as well as on historical

flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

Education

Wilson was educated at Indiana University where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in 1966. followed by a Master of Science degree from Ohio State University in 1968. His

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

, also from Ohio State University was awarded in 1969 for research supervised by

Career and research

His breakthrough in pairwise balanced designs, and orthogonal Latin squares built upon the groundwork set before him, by

R. C. Bose Raj Chandra Bose (19 June 1901 – 31 October 1987) was an Indian American mathematician and statistician best known for his work in design theory, finite geometry and the theory of error-correcting codes in which the class of BCH codes is p ...

E. T. Parker Ernest Tilden Parker (1926–1991) was a professor emeritus of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is notable for his breakthrough work along with R. C. Bose and S. S. Shrikhande in their disproof of the famous conjecture made by ...

S. S. Shrikhande Sharadchandra Shankar Shrikhande (19 October 1917 – 21 April 2020) was an Indian mathematician with notable achievements in combinatorial mathematics. He was notable for his breakthrough work along with R. C. Bose and E. T. Parker in their di ...

, and Haim Hanani is widely referenced in

Combinatorial Design Theory Combinatorial design theory is the part of combinatorial mathematics that deals with the existence, construction and properties of systems of finite sets whose arrangements satisfy generalized concepts of ''balance'' and/or ''symmetry''. These c ...

and Coding Theory.

Musical career

Wilson is also one of the world's top experts on historical flutes.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilson, R. M. Combinatorialists 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians California Institute of Technology faculty Living people 1945 births People from Gary, Indiana Mathematicians from Indiana Indiana University alumni Ohio State University alumni