Herbert Saul Wilf (June 13, 1931 – January 7, 2012) was a mathematician, specializing in combinatorics and graph theory. He was the Thomas A. Scott Professor of Mathematics in Combinatorial Analysis and Computing at the University of Pennsylvania. He wrote numerous books and research papers. Together with Neil Calkin he founded The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics in 1994 and was its editor-in-chief until 2001.
Appointed Thomas A. Scott Professor of Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1997, succeeding Eugenio Calabi and Shmuel Weinberger, who held the chair between 1963-1994 and 1994-1997 respectively. Previously held appointments as assistant, associate and full professor at Penn starting 1962.
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Honorary editor of the Journal of Combinatorics.
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He is an authority on combinatorics, a branch of applied mathematics. Besides being a personal friend of legendary Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos (d. 1996), he was also the mentor of mathematician Fan Chung (1949-).
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Received undergraduate degree in mathematics from MIT in 1952 and PhD in mathematics from Columbia University in 1958.
Known for movies
N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdös 1993 as Himself
$14 Million