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

graph theory In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of ''graph (discrete mathematics), graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of ''Vertex (graph ...

at the

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public university, public research university and Institute of technology (United States), institute of technology in Atlanta, ...

. Thomas received his doctorate in 1985 from

Charles University Charles University (CUNI; , UK; ; ), or historically as the University of Prague (), is the largest university in the Czech Republic. It is one of the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest universities in the world in conti ...

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

(now the

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

), under the supervision of

Jaroslav Nešetřil Jaroslav Nešetřil (; born 13 March 1946) is a Czech mathematician. His research areas include combinatorics (structural combinatorics, Ramsey theory), graph theory (coloring problems, sparse structures), algebra (representation of structures, c ...

. He joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 1989, and became a Regents' Professor there, briefly serving as the department Chair.

Personal life

Thomas was married to Icelandic

operations research Operations research () (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve management and ...

er Sigrún Andradóttir, also a professor at Georgia Tech. On March 26, 2020, he died of

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or—in the United States—Lou Gehrig's disease (LGD), is a rare, Terminal illness, terminal neurodegenerative disease, neurodegenerative disorder that results i ...

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 continuous f ...

twice, in 1994 as co-author of a paper on the Hadwiger conjecture, and in 2009 for the proof of the

strong perfect graph theorem In graph theory, the strong perfect graph theorem is a forbidden graph characterization of the perfect graphs as being exactly the graphs that have neither odd holes (odd-length induced cycles of length at least 5) nor odd antiholes (complements o ...

. In 2011, he was awarded the Karel Janeček 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, meetings, ...

. 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. The January 2023 issue of the

Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B The ''Journal of Combinatorial Theory'', Series A and Series B, are mathematical journals specializing in combinatorics and related areas. They are published by Elsevier. ''Series A'' is concerned primarily with structures, designs, and applicati ...

was a tribute to his work.

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