Paul Seymour (mathematician) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Paul Seymour
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Seymour at Oberwolfach in 2016
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| Born | 26 July 1950 Plymouth, Devon, England
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| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | University of Oxford (BA, PhD) |
| Awards | Sloan Fellowship (1983) Ostrowski Prize (2003) George Pólya Prize (1983, 2004) Fulkerson Prize (1979, 1994, 2006, 2009) |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Princeton University Bellcore University of Waterloo Rutgers University Ohio State University |
| Doctoral advisor | Aubrey William Ingleton |
| Doctoral students | Maria Chudnovsky Sang-il Oum |
Paul D. Seymour (born July 26, 1950) is a British mathematician. He is famous for his work in discrete mathematics, especially a field called graph theory. This area of math studies how things are connected.
Paul Seymour has made big steps forward in understanding graph theory. He worked on topics like the four colour theorem, perfect graphs, and the Hadwiger conjecture. Many of his recent papers can be found on his website.
Currently, Seymour is a professor of Mathematics at Princeton University. He has won many awards for his work. These include the Sloan Fellowship in 1983 and the Ostrowski Prize in 2003. He also won the Fulkerson Prize multiple times (1979, 1994, 2006, 2009). The Pólya Prize was awarded to him in 1983 and 2004. He has received honorary degrees from several universities. In 2022, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society, a very respected group of scientists.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Paul Seymour was born in Plymouth, England. He went to Plymouth College as a day student. Later, he studied at Exeter College, Oxford. He earned his first degree, a Bachelor of Arts (BA), in 1971. He then completed his Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil) in 1975.
Career Journey
After finishing his studies, Seymour worked as a research fellow at Swansea University. This was from 1974 to 1976. He then returned to Oxford as a Junior Research Fellow. During this time, he spent a year at the University of Waterloo in Canada.
From 1980 to 1983, he was a professor at Ohio State University. Here, he started working with Neil Robertson. Their teamwork led to many important discoveries over the years. He then worked at Bellcore (Bell Communications Research) from 1983 to 1996. He also taught as an adjunct professor at Rutgers University and the University of Waterloo. In 1996, he became a professor at Princeton University.
Paul Seymour is also involved in publishing math research. He is a chief editor for the Journal of Graph Theory. He also helps edit Combinatorica and the Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B.
Family Life
Paul Seymour married Shelley MacDonald in 1979. They have two daughters, Amy and Emily. They separated in 2007. His brother, Leonard W. Seymour, is a professor at Oxford University. He works on gene therapy.
Key Contributions to Mathematics
Paul Seymour's early work focused on matroid theory. This is a branch of mathematics that studies abstract structures. His D.Phil. thesis explored matroids with a special property. For this work, he won his first Fulkerson Prize. He also showed how certain matroids, called regular matroids, are put together. This earned him his first Pólya prize.
In 1980, he began his important work with Neil Robertson. This led to the "Graph Minors Project." This was a huge project with 23 papers published over 30 years.
Graph Minors Project
The Graph Minors Project had several major findings:
- They proved the graph structure theorem. This theorem helps understand how graphs that don't contain a certain smaller graph (called a "minor") are built.
- They showed that in any endless group of graphs, one graph will always be a minor of another. This means that if a graph property can be described by what minors it doesn't have, then you only need a limited list of those "forbidden" minors.
- They also found fast ways (algorithms) to check if a graph contains a specific graph as a minor. They also solved the problem of finding "k vertex-disjoint paths."
Working with Robin Thomas
Around 1990, Robin Thomas joined Robertson and Seymour. Their teamwork led to more important papers:
- They proved a conjecture about graphs that can be drawn in 3D space without links.
- They helped simplify the computer-based proof of the four-colour theorem. This theorem states that any map can be colored with only four colors so that no two neighboring regions have the same color.
- They described special graphs called bipartite graphs.
Perfect Graphs and Beyond
In 2000, Seymour and his colleagues worked on the strong perfect graph conjecture. This was a famous unsolved problem in math. Seymour's student, Maria Chudnovsky, joined them in 2001. In 2002, the four of them successfully proved the conjecture.
Seymour continued to work with Chudnovsky. They found more results about "induced subgraphs." They also developed a fast computer method to test if a graph is "perfect." Another key finding was a general description of "claw-free graphs."
More recently, in the 2010s, Seymour focused on χ-boundedness and the Erdős–Hajnal conjecture. With Alex Scott and Maria Chudnovsky, they proved two conjectures. These conjectures were about graphs with certain properties having specific types of cycles. Their work helped solve other conjectures connecting graph coloring to mathematical concepts like homology.
See also
- Robertson–Seymour theorem
- Strong perfect graph theorem
