Ralph Jasper Faudree (August 23, 1939 – January 13, 2015) was 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 ...

, a professor of mathematics and the former provost of the

University of Memphis } The University of Memphis (UofM) is a public research university in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1912, the university has an enrollment of more than 22,000 students. The university maintains the Herff College of Engineering, the Center for Ea ...

.
Faudree to Step Down as University Provost - retrieved 2014-04-22. Faudree was born in Durant, Oklahoma. He did his undergraduate studies at

Oklahoma Baptist University Oklahoma Baptist University (OBU) is a private Baptist university in Shawnee, Oklahoma. It was established in 1910 under the original name of The Baptist University of Oklahoma. OBU is owned and was founded by the Baptist General Convention of ...

, graduating in 1961,Curriculum vitae
from Memphis U. and received his Ph.D. in 1964 from

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and mone ...

under the supervision of Eugene Schenkman (1922–1977). Faudree was an instructor at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

and an assistant professor at the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...

before joining the Memphis State University faculty as an associate professor in 1971. Memphis State became renamed as the University of Memphis in 1994, and Faudree was appointed as provost in 2001. Faudree specialized in combinatorics, and specifically 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 ...

and

Ramsey theory Ramsey theory, named after the British mathematician and philosopher Frank P. Ramsey, is a branch of mathematics that focuses on the appearance of order in a substructure given a structure of a known size. Problems in Ramsey theory typically ask ...

. He published more than 200 mathematical papers on these topics together with such notable mathematicians as

Béla Bollobás Béla Bollobás FRS (born 3 August 1943) is a Hungarian-born British mathematician who has worked in various areas of mathematics, including functional analysis, combinatorics, graph theory, and percolation. He was strongly influenced by Pa ...

, Stefan Burr, Paul Erdős, Ron Gould,

András Gyárfás András Gyárfás (born 1945) is a Hungarian mathematician who specializes in the study of graph theory. He is famous for two conjectures: * Together with Paul Erdős he conjectured what is now called the Erdős–Gyárfás conjecture which sta ...

, Brendan McKay, Cecil Rousseau, Richard Schelp, Miklós Simonovits,

Joel Spencer Joel Spencer (born April 20, 1946) is an American 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, da ...

, and Vera Sós. He was the 2005 recipient of the

Euler Medal The Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications (ICA) is an international scientific organization formed in 1990 to increase the visibility and influence of the combinatorial community. In pursuit of this goal, the ICA sponsors conferences, ...

for his contributions to combinatorics.. His

Erdős number The Erdős number () describes the "collaborative distance" between mathematician Paul Erdős and another person, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers. The same principle has been applied in other fields where a particular individual ...

was 1: he cowrote 50 joint papers with Paul Erdős beginning in 1976 and was among the three mathematicians who most frequently co-authored with Erdős.The Erdős number project

Selected publications

* * * * *

References

External links

1939 births 2015 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Graph theorists Oklahoma Baptist University alumni Purdue University alumni University of California, Berkeley faculty University of Illinois faculty University of Memphis faculty People from Durant, Oklahoma {{Oklahoma-stub