László Lovász
Encyclopedia
László Lovász (ˈlaːsloː ˈlovaːs, born March 9, 1948) is a Hungarian
mathematician, best known for his work in combinatorics
, for which he was awarded the Wolf Prize
and the Knuth Prize
in 1999, and the Kyoto Prize
in 2010.
In high school, Lovász won gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad
(in years 1964, 1965, 1966) and so did his son in 2008.
Lovász received his Candidate of Sciences degree in 1970 at Hungarian Academy of Sciences
. His advisor was Tibor Gallai
.
Until 1975, Lovász worked at the Eötvös University, between 1975–1982, he led the Department of Geometry at the University of Szeged. In 1982, he returned to the Eötvös University, where he created the Department of Computer Science. The former and current scientists of the department include György Elekes
, András Frank
, József Beck
, Éva Tardos
, András Hajnal
, Lajos Pósa
, Miklós Simonovits
, Tamás Szőnyi
.
Lovász was a professor at Yale University
during the 1990s and was a collaborative member of the Microsoft Research Center until 2006. He returned to Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
, where he was the director of the Mathematical Institute (2006–2011).
He served as president of the International Mathematical Union
between January 1, 2007 and December 31, 2010.
Lovász was awarded the Bolyai prize in 2007 and Hungary's Széchenyi Grand Prize (2008). He received the Advanced Grant of the European Research Council
(2008). He was elected foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
(2007), honorary member of the London Mathematical Society
(2009). He received the Kyoto Prize
for Basic Science (2010). Lovász is listed as an ISI highly cited researcher
.
Lovász wrote 6 papers with Paul Erdős
, a mathematician who was famous for writing papers with co-authors, which earned Lovász an Erdős number
of one.
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
mathematician, best known for his work in combinatorics
Combinatorics
Combinatorics is a branch of mathematics concerning the study of finite or countable discrete structures. Aspects of combinatorics include counting the structures of a given kind and size , deciding when certain criteria can be met, and constructing and analyzing objects meeting the criteria ,...
, for which he was awarded the Wolf Prize
Wolf Prize in Mathematics
The Wolf Prize in Mathematics is awarded almost annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Medicine, Physics and Arts...
and the Knuth Prize
Knuth Prize
The Donald E. Knuth Prize is a prize for outstanding contributions to the foundations of computer science, named after Donald E. Knuth.-History:...
in 1999, and the Kyoto Prize
Kyoto Prize
The has been awarded annually since 1985 by the Inamori Foundation, founded by Kazuo Inamori. The prize is a Japanese award similar in intent to the Nobel Prize, as it recognizes outstanding works in the fields of philosophy, arts, science and technology...
in 2010.
In high school, Lovász won gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad
International Mathematical Olympiad
The International Mathematical Olympiad is an annual six-problem, 42-point mathematical olympiad for pre-collegiate students and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. It has since been held annually, except in 1980...
(in years 1964, 1965, 1966) and so did his son in 2008.
Lovász received his Candidate of Sciences degree in 1970 at Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest.-History:...
. His advisor was Tibor Gallai
Tibor Gallai
Tibor Gallai was a Hungarian mathematician. He worked in combinatorics, especially in graph theory, and was a lifelong friend and collaborator of Paul Erdős. He was a student of Dénes König and an advisor of László Lovász...
.
Until 1975, Lovász worked at the Eötvös University, between 1975–1982, he led the Department of Geometry at the University of Szeged. In 1982, he returned to the Eötvös University, where he created the Department of Computer Science. The former and current scientists of the department include György Elekes
György Elekes
György Elekes was a mathematician and computer scientist who specialized in Combinatorial geometry and Combinatorial set theory. He may be best known for his work in the field that would eventually be called Additive Combinatorics. Particularly notable was his "ingenious" application of the...
, András Frank
András Frank
András Frank is a Hungarian mathematician, working in combinatorics, especially in graph theory, and combinatorial optimisation...
, József Beck
József Beck
József Beck is a Harold H. Martin Professor of Mathematics at Rutgers University.His contributions to combinatorics include the partial colouring lemma and the Beck–Fiala theorem in discrepancy theory, the algorithmic version of the Lovász local lemma, the two extremes theorem in combinatorial...
, Éva Tardos
Éva Tardos
Éva Tardos is a Hungarian mathematician, winner of the Fulkerson Prize , and professor of Computer Science at Cornell University.Research Interests:...
, András Hajnal
András Hajnal
András Hajnal is an emeritus professor of mathematics at Rutgers University and a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences known for his work in set theory and combinatorics.-Biography:Hajnal was born on 13 May 1931, in Hungary....
, Lajos Pósa
Lajos Pósa (mathematician)
Lajos Pósa is a Hungarian mathematician, working in combinatorics. Paul Erdős's favorite "child", he discovered theorems at the age of 16. Since 2002 he works at the Rényi Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; earlier he was at the Eötvös Loránd University, at the Departments of...
, Miklós Simonovits
Miklós Simonovits
Miklós Simonovits is a Hungarian mathematician who currently works at the Rényi Institute of Mathematics in Budapest and is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is on the advisory board of the journal Combinatorica. He is best known for his work in extremal graph theory...
, Tamás Szőnyi
Tamás Szőnyi
Tamás Szőnyi is a Hungarian mathematician, doing research in finite geometry. He is full professor at the Department of Computer Science of the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, vice director of the Institute of Mathematics, and vice chairman of the Mathematical Committee of the Hungarian...
.
Lovász was a professor at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
during the 1990s and was a collaborative member of the Microsoft Research Center until 2006. He returned to Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
, where he was the director of the Mathematical Institute (2006–2011).
He served as president of the International Mathematical Union
International Mathematical Union
The International Mathematical Union is an international non-governmental organisation devoted to international cooperation in the field of mathematics across the world. It is a member of the International Council for Science and supports the International Congress of Mathematicians...
between January 1, 2007 and December 31, 2010.
Lovász was awarded the Bolyai prize in 2007 and Hungary's Széchenyi Grand Prize (2008). He received the Advanced Grant of the European Research Council
European Research Council
The European Research Council is the independent body that funds investigator-driven frontier research in the European Union . It is part of the Seventh Research Framework Programme ....
(2008). He was elected foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...
(2007), honorary member of the London Mathematical Society
London Mathematical Society
-See also:* American Mathematical Society* Edinburgh Mathematical Society* European Mathematical Society* List of Mathematical Societies* Council for the Mathematical Sciences* BCS-FACS Specialist Group-External links:* * *...
(2009). He received the Kyoto Prize
Kyoto Prize
The has been awarded annually since 1985 by the Inamori Foundation, founded by Kazuo Inamori. The prize is a Japanese award similar in intent to the Nobel Prize, as it recognizes outstanding works in the fields of philosophy, arts, science and technology...
for Basic Science (2010). Lovász is listed as an ISI highly cited researcher
ISI highly cited researcher
ISI Highly Cited is a database of "highly cited researchers"—scientific researchers whose publications are most often cited in academic journals over the past decade, published by the Institute for Scientific Information...
.
Lovász wrote 6 papers with Paul Erdős
Paul Erdos
Paul Erdős was a Hungarian mathematician. Erdős published more papers than any other mathematician in history, working with hundreds of collaborators. He worked on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory...
, a mathematician who was famous for writing papers with co-authors, which earned Lovász an Erdős number
Erdos number
The Erdős number describes the "collaborative distance" between a person and mathematician Paul Erdős, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers.The same principle has been proposed for other eminent persons in other fields.- Overview :...
of one.
Books
He co-authored or edited the following books:- Lovász L., Pelikán J., Vesztergombi K.: Kombinatorika, Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest, 1977
- Gács P., Lovász L.: Algoritmusok, Müszaki Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1978; Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest, 1987
- L. Lovász: Combinatorial Problems and Exercises, Akadémiai Kiadó - North Holland, Budapest, 1979 , revised: Elsevier, Akadémiai Kiadó, 1993, reprint: AMS Chelsea Publishing, 2007.
- L. Lovász, M.D. Plummer: Matching Theory, Akadémiai Kiadó - North Holland, Budapest, 1986
- L. Lovász: An Algorithmic Theory of Numbers, Graphs, and Convexity, CBMS-NSF Regional Conference Series in Applied Mathematics 50, SIAM, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1986
- M. Grötschel, L. Lovász, A. Schrijver: Geometric Algorithms and Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, 1988
- B. Korte, L. Lovász, R. Schrader: Greedoids, Springer, 1991
- Ronald L. Graham, , M. Grötschel, L. Lovász (eds.): Handbook of Combinatorics Elsevier Science B.V., 1995
- L. Lovász, J. Pelikán, K. Vesztergombi K.: Discrete Mathematics: Elementary and Beyond, Springer, New York, 2003
See also
- Topological combinatoricsTopological combinatoricsThe discipline of combinatorial topology used combinatorial concepts in topology and in the early 20th century this gradually turned into the field of algebraic topology....
- Lovász conjectureLovász conjectureIn graph theory, the Lovász conjecture is a classical problem on Hamiltonian paths in graphs. It says:The original article of Lovász stated the result in the opposite, butthis version became standard...
- Erdős–Faber–Lovász conjectureErdos–Faber–Lovász conjectureIn graph theory, the Erdős–Faber–Lovász conjecture is an unsolved problem about graph coloring, named after Paul Erdős, Vance Faber, and László Lovász, who formulated it in 1972...
- Lovász local lemmaLovász local lemmaIn probability theory, if a large number of events are all independent of one another and each has probability less than 1, then there is a positive probability that none of the events will occur...
- LLL algorithm
- Geometry of numbersGeometry of numbersIn number theory, the geometry of numbers studies convex bodies and integer vectors in n-dimensional space. The geometry of numbers was initiated by ....
- Perfect graph theoremPerfect graphIn graph theory, a perfect graph is a graph in which the chromatic number of every induced subgraph equals the size of the largest clique of that subgraph....
- GreedoidGreedoidIn combinatorics, a greedoid is a type of set system. It arises from the notion of the matroid, which was originally introduced by Whitney in 1935 to study planar graphs and was later used by Edmonds to characterize a class of optimization problems that can be solved by greedy algorithms...
- Bell numberBell numberIn combinatorics, the nth Bell number, named after Eric Temple Bell, is the number of partitions of a set with n members, or equivalently, the number of equivalence relations on it...
- Lovász numberLovász numberIn graph theory, Lovász number of a graph is a real number that is an upper bound on the Shannon capacity of the graph. It is also known as Lovász theta function and is commonly denoted by ϑ...