Kenneth Appel

Kenneth Appel (born 1932) is a mathematician who in 1976, with colleague Wolfgang Haken at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, solved one of the most famous problems in mathematics, the four-color theorem. They proved that any two-dimensional map, with certain limitations, can be filled in with four colors without any adjacent "countries" sharing the same color. Appel's children, including Laurel Appel, Peter Appel, and Andrew Appel, now a professor at Princeton, helped in the checking of over 1000 topological cases that constitute this proof.

The proof has been one of the most controversial of modern mathematics because of its heavy dependence on computer "number-crunching" to sort through possibilities. Even Appel has agreed, in numerous interviews, that it lacks elegance and provided no new insight that has guided future mathematical research.

Others, however, have pointed to this work as the start of a sea-change in mathematicians' attitudes toward computers - which they had largely disdained as a tool for engineers rather than for theoreticians - leading to the creation of what is sometimes called "experimental mathematics."

From 1993 through 2002, Appel was head of the mathematics department at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire. Although retired now, he still works and occasionally teaches there and has an office on campus (in the new Kingsbury Hall.)