Maria Chudnovsky

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Maria Chudnovsky
MariaChudnovsky2011.jpg
Chudnovsky in 2011.
Born (1977-01-06) January 6, 1977 (age 47)
Leningrad, Soviet Union [1]
Nationality Israeli-American
Alma mater Technion
Princeton University
Known for Graph theory,
Combinatorial optimization
Scientific career
Fields Mathematics
Institutions Princeton University
Thesis Berge Trigraphs and Their Applications.  (2005)
Doctoral advisor Paul Seymour

Maria Chudnovsky (born January 6, 1977) is an Israeli-American mathematician working on graph theory and combinatorial optimization. [2] She is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow. [3]

Contents

Education and career

Chudnovsky is a professor in the department of mathematics at Princeton University. She grew up in Russia (attended Saint Petersburg Lyceum 30) and Israel, studying at the Technion, [4] and received her Ph.D. in 2003 from Princeton University under the supervision of Paul Seymour. [5] After postdoctoral research at the Clay Mathematics Institute, [4] she became an assistant professor at Princeton University in 2005, and moved to Columbia University in 2006. By 2014, she was the Liu Family Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Columbia. She returned to Princeton as a professor of mathematics in 2015. [2]

Chudnovsky is an editor for a number of mathematical journals, including Combinatorica , Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series B , Journal of Graph Theory and Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society . [2]

Research

External videos
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg Mathematician Maria Chudnovsky: 2012 MacArthur Fellow, MacArthur Foundation [6]

Chudnovsky's contributions to graph theory include the proof of the strong perfect graph theorem (with Neil Robertson, Paul Seymour, and Robin Thomas) characterizing perfect graphs as being exactly the graphs with no odd induced cycles of length at least 5 or their complements. [7] [8] [9] Other research contributions of Chudnovsky include co-authorship of the first polynomial-time algorithm for recognizing perfect graphs (time bounded by a polynomial of degree 9), [10] a structural characterization of the claw-free graphs, [11] and progress on the Erdős–Hajnal conjecture. [12]

Selected publications

Awards and honors

In 2004 Chudnovsky was named one of the "Brilliant 10" by Popular Science magazine. [13] Her work on the strong perfect graph theorem won for her and her co-authors the 2009 Fulkerson Prize. [14] In 2012 she was awarded a "genius award" under the MacArthur Fellows Program. [15] [16] She was elected as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in the 2024 class of fellows. [17]

Personal life


In 2011, she married Daniel Panner, a viola player who teaches at Mannes School of Music and Rutgers University. They have a son named Rafael. [18]

Related Research Articles

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, vertices and by contracting edges.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Perfect graph</span> Graph with tight clique-coloring relation

In graph theory, a perfect graph is a graph in which the chromatic number equals the size of the maximum clique, both in the graph itself and in every induced subgraph. In all graphs, the chromatic number is greater than or equal to the size of the maximum clique, but they can be far apart. A graph is perfect when these numbers are equal, and remain equal after the deletion of arbitrary subsets of vertices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Perfect graph theorem</span> An undirected graph is perfect if and only if its complement graph is also perfect

In graph theory, the perfect graph theorem of László Lovász states that an undirected graph is perfect if and only if its complement graph is also perfect. This result had been conjectured by Berge, and it is sometimes called the weak perfect graph theorem to distinguish it from the strong perfect graph theorem characterizing perfect graphs by their forbidden induced subgraphs.

In graph theory, the strong perfect graph theorem is a forbidden graph characterization of the perfect graphs as being exactly the graphs that have neither odd holes nor odd antiholes. It was conjectured by Claude Berge in 1961. A proof by Maria Chudnovsky, Neil Robertson, Paul Seymour, and Robin Thomas was announced in 2002 and published by them in 2006.

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 conjecture (graph theory)</span> Unproven generalization of the four-color theorem

In graph theory, the Hadwiger conjecture states that if is loopless and has no minor then its chromatic number satisfies . It is known to be true for . The conjecture is a generalization of the four-color theorem and is considered to be one of the most important and challenging open problems in the field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claw-free graph</span> Graph without four-vertex star subgraphs

In graph theory, an area of mathematics, a claw-free graph is a graph that does not have a claw as an induced subgraph.

In the mathematical area of graph theory, a graph is even-hole-free if it contains no induced cycle with an even number of vertices. More precisely, the definition may allow the graph to have induced cycles of length four, or may also disallow them: the latter is referred to as even-cycle-free graphs.

András Hajnal was a professor of mathematics at Rutgers University and a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences known for his work in set theory and combinatorics.

In graph theory, an area of mathematics, an equitable coloring is an assignment of colors to the vertices of an undirected graph, in such a way that

Combinatorica is an international journal of mathematics, publishing papers in the fields of combinatorics and computer science. It started in 1981, with László Babai and László Lovász as the editors-in-chief with Paul Erdős as honorary editor-in-chief. The current editors-in-chief are Imre Bárány and József Solymosi. The advisory board consists of Ronald Graham, Gyula O. H. Katona, Miklós Simonovits, Vera Sós, and Endre Szemerédi. It is published by the János Bolyai Mathematical Society and Springer Verlag.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bull graph</span>

In the mathematical field of graph theory, the bull graph is a planar undirected graph with 5 vertices and 5 edges, in the form of a triangle with two disjoint pendant edges.

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

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Skew partition</span>

In graph theory, a skew partition of a graph is a partition of its vertices into two subsets, such that the induced subgraph formed by one of the two subsets is disconnected and the induced subgraph formed by the other subset is the complement of a disconnected graph. Skew partitions play an important role in the theory of perfect graphs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Petersen's theorem</span>

In the mathematical discipline of graph theory, Petersen's theorem, named after Julius Petersen, is one of the earliest results in graph theory and can be stated as follows:

Petersen's Theorem. Every cubic, bridgeless graph contains a perfect matching.

In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, the Erdős–Hajnal conjecture states that families of graphs defined by forbidden induced subgraphs have either large cliques or large independent sets. It is named for Paul Erdős and András Hajnal, who first posed it as an open problem in a paper from 1977.

In graph theory, a -bounded family of graphs is one for which there is some function such that, for every integer the graphs in with can be colored with at most colors. The function is called a -binding function for . These concepts and their notations were formulated by András Gyárfás. The use of the Greek letter chi in the term -bounded is based on the fact that the chromatic number of a graph is commonly denoted . An overview of the area can be found in a survey of Alex Scott and Paul Seymour.

In graph theory, the Gyárfás–Sumner conjecture asks whether, for every tree and complete graph , the graphs with neither nor as induced subgraphs can be properly colored using only a constant number of colors. Equivalently, it asks whether the -free graphs are -bounded. It is named after András Gyárfás and David Sumner, who formulated it independently in 1975 and 1981 respectively. It remains unproven.

References

  1. Interview with a Mathematician
  2. 1 2 3 "Maria Chudnovsky Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Princeton University. Retrieved 21 Jan 2024.
  3. "2012 MacArthur Foundation 'Genius Grant' Winners". 1 October 2012. Associated Press. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
  4. 1 2 Interview with Research Fellow Maria Chudnovsky (PDF), Clay Mathematics Institute, 2005.
  5. Maria Chudnovsky at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  6. "Maria Chudnovsky". MacArthur Fellows Program . MacArthur Foundation. October 2, 2012. Retrieved December 13, 2014.
  7. Mackenzie, Dana (July 5, 2002), "Mathematics: Graph theory uncovers the roots of perfection", Science , 297 (5578): 38, doi:10.1126/science.297.5578.38, PMID   12098683, S2CID   116891342 .
  8. Cornuéjols, Gérard (2002), "The strong perfect graph conjecture", Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, Vol. III (Beijing, 2002) (PDF), Beijing: Higher Ed. Press, pp. 547–559, MR   1957560, archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-04-07, retrieved 2012-08-11
  9. Roussel, Florian; Rusu, Irena; Thuillier, Henri (2009), "The strong perfect graph conjecture: 40 years of attempts, and its resolution", Discrete Mathematics , 309 (20): 6092–6113, doi: 10.1016/j.disc.2009.05.024 , MR   2552645, S2CID   16049392 .
  10. Chudnovsky et al. (2005).
  11. Chudnovsky & Seymour (2005).
  12. Chudnovsky, Maria; Scott, Alex; Seymour, Paul; Spirkl, Sophie (2023-01-31). "Erdős–Hajnal for graphs with no 5‐hole". Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. 126 (3). Wiley: 997–1014. arXiv: 2102.04994 . doi: 10.1112/plms.12504 . ISSN   0024-6115.
  13. Minkel, J. R. (June 29, 2004), "Maria Chudnovsky", Popular Science
  14. "2009 Fulkerson Prizes" (PDF), Notices of the American Mathematical Society : 1475–1476, December 2011.
  15. Lee, Felicia R. (October 1, 2012), "Surprise Grants Transforming 23 More Lives", New York Times
  16. Maria Chudnovsky, MacArthur Foundation, October 2, 2012.
  17. 2024 Class of Fellows of the AMS, American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2023-11-08
  18. Cohen, Joyce (2014-01-08). "Striking While the Iron Is Hot - NYTimes.com". The New York Times. Retrieved 2016-02-03.