Helaman Ferguson

Helaman Rolfe Pratt Ferguson (* 1940 in Salt Lake City , Utah ) is an American mathematician and sculptor .

Ferguson, who lost both parents at an early age, grew up in New York City , studied mathematics and fine arts (painting, sculpture) at a Liberal Arts College ( Hamilton College in Clinton ) with a bachelor's degree in 1962 and graduated from the University of Washington in 1971 PhD in Mathematics in Seattle ( Some integers of Harish-Chandra ). He then taught for 17 years as a professor of mathematics at Brigham Young University . From 1988 to 1999 he was at the Center for Computer Science in Bowie (Maryland) . He already had connections to sculpture through his stepfather, a stone mason. He lives in Laurel , Maryland . In addition to his sculptural work, he continues to design algorithms.

He published in particular on algorithms for operating systems, applications of discrete matrix groups and scientific visualization.

In 1979, together with Rodney Forcade, he published a momentous recursive algorithm for determining integral linear dependencies between real numbers. The method could find this or rule out the existence of a dependency, given explicitly determined upper bounds for the amounts of the coefficients of the linear combinations. This algorithm was ranked among the ten best algorithms of the past century by SIAM guest editors Jack Dongarra and Francis Sullivan in 2000 . After its further development by Ferguson and David H. Bailey to the non-recursive PSOS algorithm, it found its first notable applications in 1989. Ferguson and Bailey improved their method in 1992 to the PSLQ algorithm . This was used by Bailey and Peter Borwein, among other things, in the discovery of formulas for calculating Pi. Finally, in 1999, Bailey, Ferguson and his colleagues gave Steve Arno a rigorous analysis of the PSLQ algorithm.

As a sculptor, Ferguson chooses mathematical forms that he previously designed on the computer. He has had several solo exhibitions at US universities and, for example, at the New York Academy of Sciences and the Mathematical Association of America in Washington, DC, as well as group exhibitions at the Computer Museum in Boston and the Smithsonian Institution, among others. One of his sculptures was chosen as the logo by the Clay Mathematics Institute (commissioned as a granite sculpture in 1999).

With Claire Ferguson, he received the JPBM (Joint Policy Board of Mathematics) Communication Award from SIAM. In 1999 he was a keynote speaker at the SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles.

literature

• Ivars Peterson : The song in the stone , Science News, Feb.17, 1996
• Claire Ferguson: Helaman Ferguson - Mathematics in Stone and Bronze , Meridian Creative Group 1994

Web links

• Website by the sculptor Ferguson

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ferguson, Forcade: Generalization of the euclidean algorithm for real numbers to all dimensions higher than two. (PDF; 369 kB) Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 1, pp. 912-914 (1979)
2. ^ Barry A. Cipra: The best of the 20th century: Editors name top 10 algorithms. (PDF; 44 kB) SIAM News 33 (2000), No. 4th
3. ^ Bailey, Ferguson: Numerical results on relations between numerical constants using a new algorithm. (PDF; 1.0 MB) Math. Comput. 53 (1989), no. 188, pp. 649-656
4. ^ Ferguson, Bailey: A polynomial time, numerically stable integer relation algorithm. (PDF; 113 kB) RNR Techn. Rept. RNR-91-032, Jul. 14, 1992.
5. ^ Ferguson, Bailey, S. Arno: Analysis of PSLQ, an integer relation finding algorithm. (PDF; 348 kB) Math. Comput. 68 (1999), no. 225, pp. 351-369
6. ↑ Figure Eight Knot Complement, Clay Mathematics Institute ( Memento of the original from October 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ↑ JPBM Award for Ferguson
8. ^ Siggraph 99, Ferguson as keynote speaker