- Robert P. Dilworth
Robert Palmer Dilworth (December 2, 1914 – October 29, 1993) was an American
mathematician . His primary research area waslattice theory ; his biography at the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive states "it would not be an exaggeration to say that he was one of the main factors in the subject moving from being merely a tool of other disciplines to an important subject in its own right". He is best known forDilworth's theorem (1950) relating chains and antichains inpartial order s; he was also the first to studyantimatroid s (Dilworth 1940). Dilworth advised 17 Ph.D. students andas of 2007 has 319 academic descendants listed at the Mathematics Genealogy Project, many through his studentJuris Hartmanis , a noted complexity theorist.Dilworth was born in 1914 in
Hemet, California , at that time a remote desert ranching town. He went to college at theCalifornia Institute of Technology , receiving his baccalaureate in 1936 and continuing there for his graduate studies. Dilworth's graduate advisor wasMorgan Ward , a student ofEric Temple Bell who was also on the CalTech faculty at the time. On receiving his Ph.D. in 1939, Dilworth took an instructorship atYale University . While at Yale, he met and married his wife, Miriam White, with whom he eventually had two sons. He returned to Caltech as a faculty member in 1943, and spent the remainder of his academic career there.Dilworth's
Erdős number is three due to his collaboration with his studentCurtis Greene .Selected bibliography
*cite book
title = Dilworth Theorems: Selected Papers of Robert P. Dilworth
series = Contemporary Mathematicians
author = Bogart, Kenneth P.; Freese, Ralph; Kung, Joseph P. S., editors
publisher = Birkhauser
year = 1990
id = ISBN 978-0817634346*cite book
title = Algebraic Theory of Lattices
author = Crawley, Peter; Dilworth, Robert P.
publisher = Prentice-Hall
year = 1973
location = Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
id = ISBN 9780130222695*cite journal
author = Dilworth, Robert P.
title = Lattices with unique irreducible decompositions
journal =Annals of Mathematics
volume = 41
year = 1940
pages = 771–777
doi = 10.2307/1968857*cite journal
author = Dilworth, Robert P.
title = A Decomposition Theorem for Partially Ordered Sets
journal =Annals of Mathematics
volume = 51
pages = 161–166
year = 1950
doi = 10.2307/1969503*cite journal
author = Dilworth, Robert P.; Greene, Curtis
title = A counterexample to the generalization of Sperner's theorem
journal = Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A
volume = 10
year = 1971
pages = 18–21
id = MathSciNet | id = 0276145
doi = 10.1016/0097-3165(71)90063-XReferences and external links
*cite journal
author = Kenneth P. Bogart
title = R. P. Dilworth
journal = Order
year = 1995
volume = 12
issue = 1
pages = 1–4
doi = 10.1007/BF01108587*O'Connor, J. J.; Robertson, E. F. [http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Dilworth.html Robert Palmer Dilworth] . MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.
* [http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/html/id.phtml?id=10395 Dilworth's academic genealogy] at the Mathematics Genealogy Project.
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