ICA

 From BICA (17) 1996: Paul Catlin, 1948—1995 On April 20, 1995, Paul Allen Catlin passed away in Detroit, Michigan, at the age of 46, and the community of graph theory lost one of its best friends. Paul Catlin was born on June 25, 1948 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He received his BA at Carnegie—Mellon University in 1970, and then went to The Ohio State University, where he earned his MS in 1973 and PhD in 1976, studying under Prof. Neil Robertson. Ile accepted a as an Assistant Professor at Wayne State University upon graduation and remained there for the rest of his life. Paul was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1981 and to full professor in 1990. He was a very effective advisor, with success that is shown in the list of his graduate students. These were I-long-Jian Lai (MS in 1985 and PhD in 1988), Zhi-Hong Chen (PhD in 1991), X. Y. su (PhD in 1994), Ciping Chen (nearing completion of his PhD), and M. Bayen (PhD dissertation in progress). In addition, he had ...

 From BICA (16) 1996: Raphael M. Robinson John Brillhart In the fall of 1948, when I entered U.C. Berkeley as a freshman, the university was bursting with who were getting a free education under the G.I. bill. By great good luck in my second semester, I took a course in the theory of equations taught by Raphael. We used the newly published, outstanding book of Uspensky [8].   I was deeply interested in the course, for it contained such topics as complex numbers, solving cubic and quartic equations, Vieta's and Newton's formulas, symmetric polynomials, elimination theory with resultants and discriminants, and Sturm sequences. Raphael wrote out his lectures in advance in a clear, strong hand with a fountain pen and then copied the notes onto the board during the lecture. The notes were clear, direct, and complete and I began to get a glimpse of a new level of understanding mathematics. Raphael was a very sensible and deliberate man who required you to make sense, even i...

 From BICA (15) 1995: The 1995 Kirkman Medals of the ICA The 1995 Kirkman Medals of the ICA are awarded to members of the Institute who received their doctoral degrees in 1991, 1992, or 1993, and who have already produced a substantial amount of research work of exceptional quality. The Kirkman Medals were inaugurated in 1994, and the 1995 Kirkman Medals, the first to be granted, have been awarded to Jonathan Jedwab and Robert Craigen. We give summaries of the much more extensive citations and publication lists that were supplied by the nominators of these two outstanding young researchers. Jonathan Jedwab received his Master's degree from Cambridge University and completed a doctorate at Royal Holloway College of the University of London, under the direction of Fred Piper, in 1991. Despite being only a part-time doctoral student, he completed his thesis in a record years. Since that time, he has been employed at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, where he is involved in seven pendi...

 From BICA (15) 1995: The 1995 Kirkman Medals of the ICA The 1995 Kirkman Medals of the ICA are awarded to members of the Institute who received their doctoral degrees in 1991, 1992, or 1993, and who have already produced a substantial amount of research work of exceptional quality. The Kirkman Medals were inaugurated in 1994, and the 1995 Kirkman Medals, the first to be granted, have been awarded to Jonathan Jedwab and Robert Craigen. We give summaries of the much more extensive citations and publication lists that were supplied by the nominators of these two outstanding young researchers. Robert Craigen received his Bachelor's degree from the University of British Columbia and both his Master's and Doctorate from the University of Waterloo; his supervisor for the Ph.D. (1991) was Larry Cummings. Since graduation, he has at the University of Lethbridge. Robert Craigen has developed a very original method of composing matrices that he calls the "weaving method" ...

 From BICA (15) 1995: The 1995 Hall Medals of the ICA The Hall Medals of the ICA are awarded to Fellows of the Institute who have not passed age 40 and who have already produced a distinguished corpus of significant research work. The Hall Medals were inaugurated in 1994, and the 1995 Hall Medals, the first to be granted, have been awarded to Ortrud Ruth Oellerman, Christopher Andrew Rodger, and Douglas Robert Stinson. We herewith give summaries of the much more extensive citations and publication lists that were supplied by the nominators of these three scholars. Doug Stinson did his undergraduate work in Combinatorics and Optimization at the University of Waterloo. After a master's degree at Ohio state, under Rick Wilson, he returned to Waterloo where he worked under Ron Mullin and produced an outstanding doctoral thesis on frames. After spending eight years as a University Research Fellow at the University of Manitoba, during which time he reached the rank of Full Professor,...

 From BICA (15) 1995: The 1995 Hall Medals of the ICA The Hall Medals of the ICA are awarded to Fellows of the Institute who have not passed age 40 and who have already produced a distinguished corpus of significant research work. The Hall Medals were inaugurated in 1994, and the 1995 Hall Medals, the first to be granted, have been awarded to Ortrud Ruth Oellerman, Christopher Andrew Rodger, and Douglas Robert Stinson. We herewith give summaries of the much more extensive citations and publication lists that were supplied by the nominators of these three scholars. After obtaining a master's degree at the University of Sydney in Australia, under Jennifer Seberry, Chris Rodger went to the University of Reading for a Ph.D. under the direction of Tony Hilton. He is currently at Auburn University where he holds the position of Alumni Professor in the Department of Discrete and Statistical Science. Author of over seventy papers in a wide diversity of journals, he has made many signif...

 From BICA (15) 1995: The 1994 Hall Medals of the ICA   The Hall Medals of the ICA are awarded to Fellows of the Institute who have not passed age 40 and who have already produced a distinguished corpus of significant research work. The Hall Medals were inaugurated in 1994, and the 1995 Hall Medals, the first to be granted, have been awarded to Ortrud Ruth Oellerman, Christopher Andrew Rodger, and Douglas Robert Stinson. We herewith give summaries of the much more extensive citations and publication lists that were supplied by the nominators of these three scholars. After a master's degree at the University of Natal, in Durban, South Africa, under the direction of Henda Swart, Ortrud Oellerman completed her doctorate at Western Michigan University under Gary Chartrand. After five years on the faculty at the University of Natal, she followed her husband, who is a medical   doctor, to Canada and now holds an adjunct appointment at Brandon University. She has contribut...

  From BICA (15) 1995: The 1994 Euler Medal of the ICA The Euler Medal of the ICA provides recognition for a distinguished lifetime career contribution to combinatorial research by a Fellow of the ICA who is still active in research. The 1995 Euler Medal has been awarded to Professor Joseph A. Thas of the University of Ghent, Belgium. Professor Thas has been a Full Professor at the University of Ghent since 1970. He has published 5 books and over 150 papers, is a member of the Belgium Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Fine Arts (since 1988), and serves on the editorial board of various journals. Among other honours he has received the Scientific Louis Empain Award and the Francois Deruyts Award of the Royal Academy of Belgium. Professor Thas is recognized as one of the world leaders in the field of finite geometry. In his early work, among many original results, he extended the results of Segre on arcs and caps in PG(r,q) to spaces over matrix algebras. Since 1972, he has been ...

 From BICA (14) 1995: CITATION OF PROFESSOR CRISPIN NASH-WILLIAMS FOR THE HONORARY DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF MATHEMATICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO  •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Crispin St.John Alvah Nash-Williams has been a leading contributor to combinatorial mathematics for thirty-five years. Beginning at a time when the subject was relatively undeveloped, he led the way in identifying important research problems, developing new techniques, and establishing the highest standards of rigour and integrity. His elegant and deep results have paved the way for many of the key developments in recent years. Professor Nash-Williams is especially recognized for his work on infinite graph theory. He has provided answers to many fundamental questions in this area. including existence of Hamiltonian and Euler paths, existence of transversals, and the problem of reconstruction. Perhaps most notable are his contributions to the theory of well-quasi-ordering, which n...

 From BICA (13) 1995 Frank and the Hyena* • This article represents a "roast" that was given in honour of Professor Harary at the 255th Anniversary of Graph Theory conference in Durban. Usually roasts are restricted to Politicians, but Frank's prominence propelled him into the roast circuit. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It is a pleasure and an honor to introduce Frank Harary, our evening's distinguished speaker. No praise would be too much for this gentleman. No reward, for his accomplishments, would be too great. Rather than bore you with details of his uncountable achievements, I'll restrict my remarks to an event to which I personally witnessed several years ago. There are many false rumors about this episode, and they seem to be growing at an exponential rate. Further, our good colleague is too humble and modest a man to speak of them himself. So, I hope during this time we can clear the record. The problem came when Frank fell asleep during one of h...

From BICA (13) 1995:  Peter O'Halloran (right) presenting an Erdös award to Ron Dunkley. One of Peter's last official acts. Photo from BICA (13) 1995. PETER O'HALLORAN A PERSONAL TRIBUTE R.G. Stanton, University of Manitoba Early in September, 1 was talking on the telephone, from the University of Leeds, with Peter O'Halloran at his home; he was his usual cheerful self, but it was evident, from his coughing, that he was extremely unwell. When Peter Taylor sent me an email later in the month that Peter had died, I felt a deep because the mathematical world has lost a man who could still have contributed a great deal. But we can all be very proud of the enormous impact that he has had on Australian mathematics and, indeed, on world mathematics. My own feeling is that Peter O'Halloran contributed more to the development of mathematics in the past 25 years than any other single person. Those of us who write research papers typically publish results that are read b...

From BICA (12) 1994 by John van Rees Rudi Mathon Professor, University of Toronto We are always looking for new methods to tackle our favourite intractable problems. Those of us who know the hill-climbing and simulated annealing techniques realize that these are wonderful algorithms for finding various combinatorial objects. But often these algorithms are not powerful enough to do the job. So it is with great interest that we learn from Rudi Mathon, via his talk at the Vermont Summer Workshop, that there is a new variation to the search algorithms developed by the optimization people that may help us all. Rudi was examining Steiner Systems, S(t,k,v), exact packings of k-sets from a v-set with the property that each t-set occurs exactly once. For t ≥ 5, there are only 9 orders known to S(5,6,168). Rudi assumed the design had PSL2(23) as an automorphism group, obtained the 5-set and 6-set orbit representatives, and found which 6-set orbit representative covered which 5-set orbit r...

From BICA 12(1994) Obituary: Frank Yates May 12, 1902-June 17, 1994 It is impossible to summarise the research achievements of one of the great statisticians of this century in a brief obituary. The Times (Saturday, June 25, 1994) spends half of its space in giving an account of the work Dr Yates did during the War in analysing the strike patterns of V-ls around London so as to identify the sites being targeted, and thus aid in the deployment of interceptor fighter squadrons. A better insight into the enormous impact of the work of Dr Yates is provided by the article F.Y.-A Personal Note, by M.J.R. Healy (Utilitas Mathematica, 21A, 1982, 3-12); this article introduces the two special volumes that were published on the occasion of Dr Yates's 80th birthday. Healy's article shows the enormous contribution that Yates made to experimental design and to the analysis of design, as well as his later major contributions to sampling and to the use of computers in statistical analy...

From BICA (11) 1994 PERSONALITY OF THE MONTH Jeff Dinitz Professor, University of Vermont The Bulletin has to start this vignette with an apology to Jeff. By a fluke, Jeffs name was left off the list of members of the Council of the ICA. This omission has now been corrected - see page 1 of this issue of the Bulletin.  Jeff is a member of Council for a three-year term from 1993 to 1996. In 1992, Jeff Dinitz and Doug Stinson, published Contemporary Design Theory, A Collection of Surveys (John Wiley and Sons, Inc.). This book was reviewed in Volume 9 of the Bulletin (page 9), and continues to receive a lot of well deserved acclaim; Jeff and Doug seem to have filled a real need with this timely and outstanding work. Last year, graph theorists received electrifying news from Jeff on the famous problem of the number of one factorizations of K_12 . Here is an extract from the email message of Monday, September 20, 1993 at 16:04:28. Theorem. There are 526,915,620 non-isomo...

Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter . Professor Coxeter's work on geometry, especially in the field of projective and non-Euclidean geometry, has established him as the foremost geometer of our time. He gave the impetus to the development of combinatorics in Canada by his appreciation of the importance of design theory and graph theory, and his lectures on finite configurations at Toronto trained a group of Canadian combinatorialists. By his own work, and by bringing Professor W.T. Tutte to Canada, he started up the group of Canadian graph theorists. His fundamental book on finite groups, with W.O.J. Moser, is still a tremendous stimulus to research. From his citation as one of the first Honorary Fellows, BICA (1), 1991. His wikipedia page has excellent detail and citations: Harold Scott MacDonald "Donald" Coxeter, CC, FRS, FRSC (February 9, 1907 – March 31, 2003) was a British-born Canadian geometer. Coxeter is regarded as one of the greatest geometers of the 20th...