Robert A. (Bob) Bosch (born August 13, 1963, in

Buffalo NY Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Souther ...

) is an author, recreational mathematician and the James F. Clark Professor of Mathematics at

Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...

.Robert Bosch at Oberlin College
home page He is known for domino art
Oberlin Alumni Magazine Winter 2014] Vol 109 No. 1 and for combining

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

mathematical optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...

to design connect-the-dots eye candy:
The Mathematics of Opt Art
', Review by Evelyn Lamb, Scientific American, 03 January, 2020 labyrinths, knight's tours,

string art __notoc__ String art or pin and thread art, is characterized by an arrangement of colored thread strung between points to form geometric patterns or representational designs such as a ship's sails, sometimes with other artist material comprisin ...

and TSP Art. He is the author of ''Opt Art: From Mathematical Optimization to Visual Design''.

Education and career

Bosch received a BA in mathematics at Oberlin College in 1985, an MS in

operations research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve deci ...

and

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute () (RPI) is a private research university in Troy, New York, with an additional campus in Hartford, Connecticut. A third campus in Groton, Connecticut closed in 2018. RPI was established in 1824 by Stephen Van ...

in 1987 and a PhD in operations research with the thesis ''Partial Updating in Interior-Point Methods for Linear Programming'' under Kurt Martin Anstreicher at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1991.Robert Alexander Mark Boschr
at the Mathematics Genealogy Project He has been at Oberlin College since 1991 where he teaches mathematics, statistics and computer science.

Combining art and mathematics

Bosch is passionate about using computers and mathematical optimization techniques to design visual art. He refers to this work as "Opt Art." He has written dozens of papers on this topic, many of them with Oberlin College student collaborators. Over the years Bosch has created numerous portraits drawn with a single continuous line. Some of these drawings are solutions of the

Traveling salesman problem The travelling salesman problem (also called the travelling salesperson problem or TSP) asks the following question: "Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible route that visits each cit ...

(or solutions to related problems). Examples include the "figurative tours" he created with computer scientist Tom Wexler and renditions of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, a Van Gogh self portrait, and Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring. Domino portraits such as his renderings of

Martin Luther King Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...

and

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

are an expansion of the mathematical genre of opt art in another direction.

Awards

* 2007 Trevor Evans Award from the

Mathematical Association of America The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure a ...

(MAA), for the '' Math Horizons'' article "Opt Art". * 2012 Inaugural Outstanding Paper Award from the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, for the article "Simple-Close-Curve Sculptures of Knots and Links". * 2010 First Prize in the Mathematical Art Exhibition 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, ...

(AMS), for the sculpture ''Embrace''.2010 Mathematical Art Exhibition
AMS

References

External links

Opt Art: From Mathematical Optimization to Visual Design
ideo
Domino Artwork: The Mathematical Artwork of Robert Bosch

Robert Bosch
Mathematical Art Galleries {{DEFAULTSORT:Bosch, Robert A. Living people 1963 births 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Recreational mathematicians Mathematics popularizers Oberlin College alumni Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alumni Yale School of Management alumni Oberlin College faculty Mathematicians from New York (state)