Charles Brenner (mathematician)

Last updated
Charles H. Brenner
Born (1945-03-18) March 18, 1945 (age 78)
Citizenship United States
Education
Known for
  • APL implementation
  • Forensic mathematics
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions University of California, Berkeley
Thesis Asymptotics of Partition Functions (1984)
Doctoral advisors Basil Gordon [1]
Ernst Straus
Website dna-view.com

Charles Hallam Brenner is an American mathematician who is the originator of forensic mathematics. His father Joel Lee Brenner was a professor of mathematics and his mother Frances Hallam Brenner was a city councilor and briefly mayor of Palo Alto, California. His uncle Charles Brenner, MD was a psychiatrist.

Contents

Brenner received a B.S. from Stanford University in 1967, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1984. [1] [2]

Brenner participated in the implementation of APL\360 and APL\1130, [3] and implemented the transpose and rotate primitive functions. [4]

More recently, Brenner specializes in the use of mathematics in DNA analysis. [5] His principal areas of interest and achievement in the mathematics of forensic DNA are kinship, rare haplotype matching, and DNA mixtures. In a couple of Y haplotype papers, most recently, [6] he showed why Y haplotypes must be much rarer, and how much rarer, than their sample frequency in a reference population sample. Brenner’s Symbolic Kinship Program, [7] which can for example assess the identification evidence based on DNA profiles from an anonymous body and an arbitrary set of presumed relatives, has been widely used in mass victim identification projects, including identifying about 1/3 of the identified World Trade Center bodies. [8] [9]

Brenner played a key role in the resolution of the Larry Hillblom inheritance case, resulting in four Amerasian children each receiving $50 million. [10]

Anecdotes

Related Research Articles

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APL is a programming language developed in the 1960s by Kenneth E. Iverson. Its central datatype is the multidimensional array. It uses a large range of special graphic symbols to represent most functions and operators, leading to very concise code. It has been an important influence on the development of concept modeling, spreadsheets, functional programming, and computer math packages. It has also inspired several other programming languages.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">DNA profiling</span> Technique used to identify individuals via DNA characteristics

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenneth E. Iverson</span> Canadian computer scientist (1920–2004)

Kenneth Eugene Iverson was a Canadian computer scientist noted for the development of the programming language APL. He was honored with the Turing Award in 1979 "for his pioneering effort in programming languages and mathematical notation resulting in what the computing field now knows as APL; for his contributions to the implementation of interactive systems, to educational uses of APL, and to programming language theory and practice".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Haplotype</span> Group of genes from one parent

A haplotype is a group of alleles in an organism that are inherited together from a single parent.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Identity by descent</span> Identical nucleotide sequence due to inheritance without recombination from a common ancestor

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Haplogroup T-M184</span> Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Y Chromosome Haplotype Reference Database</span>

The Y Chromosome Haplotype Reference Database (YHRD) is an open-access, annotated collection of population samples typed for Y chromosomal sequence variants. Two important objectives are pursued: (1) the generation of reliable frequency estimates for Y-STR haplotypes and Y-SNP haplotypes to be used in the quantitative assessment of matches in forensic and kinship cases and (2) the characterization of male lineages to draw conclusions about the origins and history of human populations. The database is endorsed by the International Society for Forensic Genetics (ISFG). By May 2023 about 350.000 Y chromosomes typed for 9-29 STR loci have been directly submitted by worldwide forensic institutions and universities. In geographic terms, about 53% of the YHRD samples stem from Asia, 21% from Europe, 12% from North America, 10% from Latin America, 3% from Africa, 0.8% from Oceania/Australia and 0.2% from the Arctic. The 1.406 individual sampling projects are described in more than 780 peer-reviewed publications

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Haplogroup T-L206, also known as haplogroup T1, is a human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup. The SNP that defines the T1 clade is L206. The haplogroup is one of two primary branches of T (T-M184), the other subclade being T2 (T-PH110).

As with all modern European nations, a large degree of 'biological continuity' exists between Bosnians and Bosniaks and their ancient predecessors with Y chromosomal lineages testifying to predominantly Paleolithic European ancestry. Studies based on bi-allelic markers of the NRY have shown the three main ethnic groups of Bosnia and Herzegovina to share, in spite of some quantitative differences, a large fraction of the same ancient gene pool distinct for the region. Analysis of autosomal STRs have moreover revealed no significant difference between the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina and neighbouring populations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Haplogroup E-M2</span> Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup

Haplogroup E-M2, also known as E1b1a1-M2, is a human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup. E-M2 is primarily distributed within sub-Saharan Africa. More specifically, E-M2 is the predominant subclade in West Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, and the region of the African Great Lakes; it also occurs at low to moderate frequencies in North Africa, and at low frequencies in the Middle East. E-M2 has several subclades, but many of these subhaplogroups are included in either E-L485 or E-U175. E-M2 is especially common among indigenous Africans who speak Niger-Congo languages, and was spread to Southern Africa and East Africa through the Bantu expansion.

References

  1. 1 2 Brenner, Charles Hallam (1984). Asymptotics of Partition Functions (Ph.D. thesis). UCLA.
  2. Brenner, Charles H. (November 1986). "Asymptotic Analogs of the Rogers-Ramanujan Identities in Number Theory". Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A. 43 (2): 303–319. doi: 10.1016/0097-3165(86)90069-5 .
  3. Breed, Lawrence M. (August 2006). "How We Got To APL\1130". Vector, Journal of the British APL Association. 22 (3). Archived from the original on 18 March 2016. Retrieved 3 April 2016.
  4. McDonnell, Eugene E. (September 2000). "DNA Analysis in APL". Vector, Journal of the British APL Association. 17 (3). Archived from the original on 19 April 2016. Retrieved 3 April 2016.
  5. 1 2 Dreifus, Claudia (8 August 2000). "A Math Sleuth Whose Secret Weapon Is Statistics". New York Times. Retrieved 3 April 2016.
  6. Brenner, Charles H. (January 2014). "Understanding Y Haplotype Matching Probability" (PDF). Forensic Science International: Genetics. 8 (1): 233–243. doi:10.1016/j.fsigen.2013.10.007. PMID   24315614. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 March 2016. Retrieved 3 April 2016.
  7. Brenner, Charles H. (February 1997). "Symbolic Kinship Program" (PDF). Genetics. 145 (2): 535–42. doi:10.1093/genetics/145.2.535. PMC   1207816 . PMID   9071605 . Retrieved 3 April 2016.
  8. Smith, Matt (6 March 2002). "Truth Over Death". SF Weekly. Retrieved 6 April 2016.
  9. Whitfield, John (23 April 2003). "World Trade Centre Forensics Break New Ground". Nature. doi:10.1038/news030421-2 . Retrieved 3 April 2016.
  10. Smith, Matt (5 April 2000). "Ca$h for Genes". SF Weekly. Retrieved 5 April 2016.
  11. Brenner, Charles H., Bridge Player 1968-1973 London, archived from the original on 15 March 2016, retrieved 6 April 2016
  12. Brenner, Charles H. (3 February 1999), The Realm of Mathematics, archived from the original on 15 March 2016, retrieved 6 April 2016

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