Daniel P. Sanders

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Daniel P. Sanders is an American mathematician. He is known for his 1996 efficient proof (algorithm) of proving the Four color theorem (with Neil Robertson, Paul Seymour, and Robin Thomas). He used to be a guest professor of the department of computer science at Columbia University.

Sanders received his Ph.D. in algorithms, combinatorics, and optimization from Georgia Tech in 1993 under the guidance of professor Robin Thomas. He was the Graph Theory Resources editor of www.graphtheory.com. Sanders is a quantitative strategist at Renaissance Technologies. He has been on the faculty of the mathematics departments of Ohio State University and Princeton University.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Four color theorem</span> Statement in mathematics

In mathematics, the four color theorem, or the four color map theorem, states that no more than four colors are required to color the regions of any map so that no two adjacent regions have the same color. Adjacent means that two regions share a common boundary curve segment, not merely a corner where three or more regions meet. It was the first major theorem to be proved using a computer. Initially, this proof was not accepted by all mathematicians because the computer-assisted proof was infeasible for a human to check by hand. The proof has gained wide acceptance since then, although some doubters remain.

In graph theory, the Robertson–Seymour theorem states that the undirected graphs, partially ordered by the graph minor relationship, form a well-quasi-ordering. Equivalently, every family of graphs that is closed under minors can be defined by a finite set of forbidden minors, in the same way that Wagner's theorem characterizes the planar graphs as being the graphs that do not have the complete graph K5 or the complete bipartite graph K3,3 as minors.

In graph theory, an undirected graph H is called a minor of the graph G if H can be formed from G by deleting edges and vertices and by contracting edges.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Snark (graph theory)</span> 3-regular graph with no 3-edge-coloring

In the mathematical field of graph theory, a snark is an undirected graph with exactly three edges per vertex whose edges cannot be colored with only three colors. In order to avoid trivial cases, snarks are often restricted to have additional requirements on their connectivity and on the length of their cycles. Infinitely many snarks exist.

In topological graph theory, a mathematical discipline, a linkless embedding of an undirected graph is an embedding of the graph into three-dimensional Euclidean space in such a way that no two cycles of the graph are linked. A flat embedding is an embedding with the property that every cycle is the boundary of a topological disk whose interior is disjoint from the graph. A linklessly embeddable graph is a graph that has a linkless or flat embedding; these graphs form a three-dimensional analogue of the planar graphs. Complementarily, an intrinsically linked graph is a graph that does not have a linkless embedding.

The Fulkerson Prize for outstanding papers in the area of discrete mathematics is sponsored jointly by the Mathematical Optimization Society (MOS) and the American Mathematical Society (AMS). Up to three awards of $1,500 each are presented at each (triennial) International Symposium of the MOS. Originally, the prizes were paid out of a memorial fund administered by the AMS that was established by friends of the late Delbert Ray Fulkerson to encourage mathematical excellence in the fields of research exemplified by his work. The prizes are now funded by an endowment administered by MPS.

George Neil Robertson is a mathematician working mainly in topological graph theory, currently a distinguished professor emeritus at the Ohio State University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Seymour (mathematician)</span> British mathematician

Paul D. Seymour is a British mathematician known for his work in discrete mathematics, especially graph theory. He was responsible for important progress on regular matroids and totally unimodular matrices, the four colour theorem, linkless embeddings, graph minors and structure, the perfect graph conjecture, the Hadwiger conjecture, claw-free graphs, χ-boundedness, and the Erdős–Hajnal conjecture. Many of his recent papers are available from his website.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hadwiger number</span> Size of largest complete graph made by contracting edges of a given graph

In graph theory, the Hadwiger number of an undirected graph G is the size of the largest complete graph that can be obtained by contracting edges of G. Equivalently, the Hadwiger number h(G) is the largest number n for which the complete graph Kn is a minor of G, a smaller graph obtained from G by edge contractions and vertex and edge deletions. The Hadwiger number is also known as the contraction clique number of G or the homomorphism degree of G. It is named after Hugo Hadwiger, who introduced it in 1943 in conjunction with the Hadwiger conjecture, which states that the Hadwiger number is always at least as large as the chromatic number of G.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Five color theorem</span>

The five color theorem is a result from graph theory that given a plane separated into regions, such as a political map of the countries of the world, the regions may be colored using no more than five colors in such a way that no two adjacent regions receive the same color.

In graph theory, the treewidth of an undirected graph is an integer number which specifies, informally, how far the graph is from being a tree. The smallest treewidth is 1; the graphs with treewidth 1 are exactly the trees and the forests. The graphs with treewidth at most 2 are the series–parallel graphs. The maximal graphs with treewidth exactly k are called k-trees, and the graphs with treewidth at most k are called partial k-trees. Many other well-studied graph families also have bounded treewidth.

In graph theory, a path decomposition of a graph G is, informally, a representation of G as a "thickened" path graph, and the pathwidth of G is a number that measures how much the path was thickened to form G. More formally, a path-decomposition is a sequence of subsets of vertices of G such that the endpoints of each edge appear in one of the subsets and such that each vertex appears in a contiguous subsequence of the subsets, and the pathwidth is one less than the size of the largest set in such a decomposition. Pathwidth is also known as interval thickness, vertex separation number, or node searching number.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Branch-decomposition</span> Hierarchical clustering of graph edges

In graph theory, a branch-decomposition of an undirected graph G is a hierarchical clustering of the edges of G, represented by an unrooted binary tree T with the edges of G as its leaves. Removing any edge from T partitions the edges of G into two subgraphs, and the width of the decomposition is the maximum number of shared vertices of any pair of subgraphs formed in this way. The branchwidth of G is the minimum width of any branch-decomposition of G.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clique-sum</span> Gluing graphs at complete subgraphs

In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, a clique-sum is a way of combining two graphs by gluing them together at a clique, analogous to the connected sum operation in topology. If two graphs G and H each contain cliques of equal size, the clique-sum of G and H is formed from their disjoint union by identifying pairs of vertices in these two cliques to form a single shared clique, and then possibly deleting some of the clique edges. A k-clique-sum is a clique-sum in which both cliques have at most k vertices. One may also form clique-sums and k-clique-sums of more than two graphs, by repeated application of the two-graph clique-sum operation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maria Chudnovsky</span> Mathematician and engineer

Maria Chudnovsky is an Israeli-American mathematician working on graph theory and combinatorial optimization. She is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow.

Daniel Alan Spielman has been a professor of applied mathematics and computer science at Yale University since 2006. As of 2018, he is the Sterling Professor of Computer Science at Yale. He is also the Co-Director of the Yale Institute for Network Science, since its founding, and chair of the newly established Department of Statistics and Data Science.

Robin Thomas was a mathematician working in graph theory at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apex graph</span> Graph which can be made planar by removing a single node

In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, an apex graph is a graph that can be made planar by the removal of a single vertex. The deleted vertex is called an apex of the graph. It is an apex, not the apex because an apex graph may have more than one apex; for example, in the minimal nonplanar graphs K5 or K3,3, every vertex is an apex. The apex graphs include graphs that are themselves planar, in which case again every vertex is an apex. The null graph is also counted as an apex graph even though it has no vertex to remove.

In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, Halin's grid theorem states that the infinite graphs with thick ends are exactly the graphs containing subdivisions of the hexagonal tiling of the plane. It was published by Rudolf Halin (1965), and is a precursor to the work of Robertson and Seymour linking treewidth to large grid minors, which became an important component of the algorithmic theory of bidimensionality.

Daniel Mier Gusfield is an American computer scientist, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Davis. Gusfield is known for his research in combinatorial optimization and computational biology.

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