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''László Pyber'' (born 8 May 1960 in
Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
) is a Hungarian
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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
. He is a researcher at the
Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics The Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics ( hu, Rényi Alfréd Matematikai Kutatóintézet) is the research institute in mathematics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. It was created in 1950 by Alfréd Rényi, who directed it until his death. ...
, Budapest. He works 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 a ...
and
group theory In abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as group (mathematics), groups. The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as ring (mathematics), rings, field ...
.


Biography

Pyber received his Ph.D. from 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 mai ...
in 1989 under the direction of László Lovász and Gyula O.H. Katona with the thesis ''Extremal Structures and Covering Problems.'' In 2007, he was awarded the Academics Prize by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2017, he was the recipient of an ERC Advanced Grant.


Mathematical contributions

Pyber has solved a number of conjectures 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 ...
. In 1985, he proved the conjecture of Paul Erdős and Tibor Gallai that edges of a simple graph with ''n'' vertices can be covered with at most ''n-1'' circuits and edges. In 1986, he proved the conjecture of Paul Erdős that a graph with ''n'' vertices and its complement can be covered with ''n''2/4+2 cliques. He has also contributed to the study of permutation groups. In 1993, he provided an upper bound for the order of a 2-transitive group of degree ''n'' not containing '' An'' avoiding the use of the
classification of finite simple groups In mathematics, the classification of the finite simple groups is a result of group theory stating that every finite simple group is either cyclic, or alternating, or it belongs to a broad infinite class called the groups of Lie type, or els ...
. Together with
Tomasz Łuczak Tomasz Łuczak (born 13 March 1963 in Poznań) is a Polish mathematician and professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and Emory University. His main field of research is combinatorics, specifically discrete structures, such as random grap ...
, Pyber proved the conjecture of
McKay McKay, MacKay or Mackay is a Scottish / Irish surname. The last phoneme in the name is traditionally pronounced to rhyme with 'eye', but in some parts of the world this has come to rhyme with 'hey'. In Scotland, it corresponds to Clan Mackay. Not ...
that for every ''ε>0,'' there is a constant ''C'' such that ''C'' randomly chosen elements invariably generate the
symmetric group In abstract algebra, the symmetric group defined over any set is the group whose elements are all the bijections from the set to itself, and whose group operation is the composition of functions. In particular, the finite symmetric group ...
''S''''n'' with probability greater than ''1-ε''. Pyber has made fundamental contributions in enumerating finite groups of a given order ''n''. In 1993, he proved that if the prime power decomposition of ''n'' is ''n''=''p''1''g''1 ⋯ ''p''''k''''g''''k'' and ''μ=''max(''g''1,...,''g''k), then the number of groups of order ''n'' is at mostIn 2004, Pyber settled several questions in
subgroup growth In mathematics, subgroup growth is a branch of group theory, dealing with quantitative questions about subgroups of a given group. Let G be a finitely generated group. Then, for each integer n define a_n(G) to be the number of subgroups H of in ...
by completing the investigation of the spectrum of possible subgroup growth types. In 2011, Pyber and Andrei Jaikin-Zapirain obtained a surprisingly explicit formula for the number of random elements needed to generate a finite ''d''-generator group with high probability. They also explored related questions for profinite groups and settled several open problems. In 2016, Pyber and Endre Szabó proved that in a finite simple group ''L'' of Lie type, a generating set ''A'' of ''L'' either grows, i.e., '', A3, '' ≥ '', A, 1+ε'' for some ''ε'' depending only on the Lie rank of ''L'', or ''A3=L''. This implies that diameters of Cayley graphs of finite simple groups of bounded rank are polylogarithmic in the size of the group, partially resolving a well-known conjecture of László Babai.


References


External links

*Pyber'
home page
*Pyber'
nomination
for
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 mai ...
membership * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pyber, Laszlo Combinatorialists Group theorists 20th-century Hungarian mathematicians 21st-century Hungarian mathematicians Living people 1960 births