Robin Thomas (August 22, 1962 – March 26, 2020) was a mathematician working in

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 conn ...

at the

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part ...

. Thomas received his doctorate in 1985 from

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 , under ...

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

(now the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

), under the supervision of

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 ...

. He joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 1989, and became a Regents' Professor there, briefly serving as the department Chair. On March 26, 2020, he died of

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or Lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurodegenerative disease that results in the progressive loss of motor neurons that control voluntary muscles. ALS is the most commo ...

at the age of 57 after 12 years of struggle with the illness.

Awards

Thomas was awarded the

Fulkerson Prize The Fulkerson Prize for outstanding papers in the area of discrete mathematics is sponsored jointly by the Mathematical Optimization Society (MOS) and the American Mathematical Society (AMS). Up to three awards of $1,500 each are presented at e ...

for outstanding papers in

discrete mathematics Discrete mathematics is the study of mathematical structures that can be considered "discrete" (in a way analogous to discrete variables, having a bijection with the set of natural numbers) rather than "continuous" (analogously to continuou ...

twice, in 1994 as co-author of a paper on the

Hadwiger conjecture There are several conjectures known as the Hadwiger conjecture or Hadwiger's conjecture. They include: * Hadwiger conjecture (graph theory), a relationship between the number of colors needed by a given graph and the size of its largest clique mino ...

, and in 2009 for the proof of the strong perfect graph theorem. In 2011 he was awarded the

Karel Janeček Karel Janeček (born 26 July 1973) is a Czech mathematician, entrepreneur, anti-corruption campaigner, creator of the D21 – Janeček method voting system and the online game Prezident 21. Early life and education Janeček was born in Plzeň. ...

Foundation Neuron Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Mathematics. In 2012 he became a 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, meeting ...

. He was named a

SIAM Fellow The SIAM Fellowship is an award and fellowship that recognizes outstanding members of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). The goal of the program is to: *honor SIAM members who are recognized by their peers as distinguishe ...

in 2018.

References

External links

Personal homepage of Robin Thomas
* 1962 births 2020 deaths Charles University alumni Georgia Tech faculty 20th-century Czech mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Deaths from motor neuron disease Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Graph theorists Czechoslovak emigrants to the United States Czechoslovak mathematicians {{US-mathematician-stub