Paul Seymour

Paul Seymour.

Paul D. Seymour (born July 26, 1950 in Plymouth ) is an English mathematician who made important contributions to combinatorics .

life and work

Seymour attended school in Plymouth and, after graduating first in the national entrance exam, studied at Oxford University (Exeter College). In 1971 he received his bachelor's degree, his master’s degree in 1972, and his doctorate there in 1975 at AWIngleton ( Matroids, Hypergraphs and the Max-Flow-Cut-Theorem ). 1974 to 1976 he was at University College Swansea, then until 1978 at Merton College in Oxford and 1978/79 at the University of Waterloo in Ontario . From 1980 he was at Ohio State University in Columbus (Ohio) , where he became professor in 1983. From 1983 to 1996 he was at Bell Labs (then Bellcore Labs, now Telcordia Technologies) in Morristown , New Jersey . From 1984 to 1987 he was also adjunct professor at Rutgers University and from 1988 to 1993 at the University of Waterloo. In 1996 he became a professor at Princeton University , where he had been visiting professor a year earlier.

From 1983 to 2004, in a series of works with Neil Robertson , he proved the Robertson-Seymour theorem (previously Klaus Wagner's conjecture ) in the theory of graph minors . In 1996, together with Robertson and Robin Thomas , he simplified the proof of the four-color theorem , which, however, still requires the use of computers. Together with Maria Chudnovsky , Robertson and Thomas, he proved the strong conjecture about perfect graphs in 2002 . He also proved with Robertson, Thomas, when a graph has a flat embedding in three-dimensional space (without links).

With Thomas and Robertson he proved the generally still open Hadwiger conjecture from graph theory for k = 6 colors.

In 1979, 1994 and 2006 he received the Fulkerson Prize . In 1983 he received the Pólya Prize and was a Sloan Research Fellow . In 2003 he received the Ostrowski Prize and in 2004 again (with Robertson) the Pólya Prize. In 1994 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Zurich (Progress on the four color theorem) and in 1986 he was invited speaker at the ICM in Berkeley (A survey of graph minors).

Paul Seymour, Columbia University 2010

Seymour is editor of the Journal of Graph Theory.

He has been married since 1979 and has two children.

Web links

• Homepage in Princeton