American mathematician (born 1934)
Kleitman
Daniel J. Kleitman (born October 4, 1934)
[1]
[2]
[3] is an American
mathematician and
professor of
applied mathematics at
MIT . His research interests include
combinatorics ,
graph theory ,
genomics , and
operations research .
Biography
Kleitman was born in 1934 in
Brooklyn ,
New York ,
[1] the younger of Bertha and Milton Kleitman's two sons. His father was a lawyer who after WWII became a commodities trader and investor. In 1942 the family moved to
Morristown, New Jersey ,
[4] and he graduated from
Morristown High School in 1950.
[1]
Kleitman then attended
Cornell University , from which he graduated in 1954,
[1] and received his
PhD in
Physics from
Harvard University in 1958 under Nobel Laureates
Julian Schwinger and
Roy Glauber .
[5] He is the "k" in
G. W. Peck , a pseudonym for a group of six mathematicians that includes Kleitman. Formerly a physics professor at
Brandeis University ,
[6] Kleitman was encouraged by
Paul Erdős to change his field of study to mathematics. Perhaps humorously, Erdős once asked him, "Why are you only a physicist?"
[1]
Kleitman joined the applied mathematics faculty at MIT in 1966, and was promoted to professor in 1969.
[6]
Kleitman coauthored at least six papers with Erdős, giving him an
Erdős number of 1.
He was a math advisor and extra for the film
Good Will Hunting .
[7] Since
Minnie Driver , who appeared in
Good Will Hunting , also appeared in
Sleepers with
Kevin Bacon , Kleitman has a
Bacon number of 2. Adding the two numbers results in an
Erdős–Bacon number of 3, which is a tie with
Bruce Reznick for the lowest number anyone has.
[8]
Personal life
On July 26, 1964 Kleitman married Sharon Ruth Alexander. They have three children.
[1]
Selected publications
Kleitman, Daniel (1966).
"On a combinatorial problem of Erdős" . Proc. Amer. Math. Soc . 17 : 139–141.
doi :
10.1090/s0002-9939-1966-0184866-9 .
MR
0184866 .
Kleitman, Daniel (1969).
"On Dedekind's problem: The number of monotone Boolean functions" . Proc. Amer. Math. Soc . 21 (3): 677–682.
doi :
10.1090/s0002-9939-1969-0241334-6 .
MR
0241334 .
Kleitman, Daniel; Rothschild, Bruce (1970).
"The number of finite topologies" . Proc. Amer. Math. Soc . 25 (2): 276–282.
doi :
10.1090/s0002-9939-1970-0253944-9 .
MR
0253944 .
Erdős, Paul; Kleitman, Daniel (1971).
"On collections of subsets containing 4-member Boolean algebras" . Proc. Amer. Math. Soc . 28 : 87–90.
doi :
10.1090/s0002-9939-1971-0270924-9 .
MR
0270924 .
Kleitman, Daniel J.; Rothschild, Bruce L. (1975).
"Asymptotic enumeration of partial orders on a finite set" (PDF) . Trans. Amer. Math. Soc . 205 : 205–220.
doi :
10.1090/s0002-9947-1975-0369090-9 .
MR
0369090 .
Kleitman, Daniel; Markowsky, George (1975).
"On Dedekind's problem: The number of isotone Boolean functions. II" . Trans. Amer. Math. Soc . 213 : 373–390.
doi :
10.1090/s0002-9947-1975-0382107-0 .
MR
0382107 .
Kleitman, Daniel J.; Rothschild, Bruce R.; Spencer, Joel H. (1976).
"The number of semigroups of order n " . Proc. Amer. Math. Soc . 55 (1): 227–232.
doi :
10.1090/s0002-9939-1976-0414380-0 .
MR
0414380 .
[9]
Kalai, Gil; Kleitman, Daniel J. (1992). "A quasi-polynomial bound for the diameter of graphs of polyhedra". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) . 26 (2): 315–316.
arXiv :
math/9204233 .
doi :
10.1090/s0273-0979-1992-00285-9 .
MR
1130448 .
S2CID
37821778 .
Alon, Noga; Kleitman, Daniel J. (1992).
"Piercing convex sets" . Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) . 27 (2): 252–256.
doi :
10.1090/s0273-0979-1992-00304-x .
MR
1149871 .
Coventry, Alex; Kleitman, Daniel J.; Berger, Bonnie (2004).
"MSARI: Multiple sequence alignments for statistical detection of RNA secondary structure" . Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A . 101 (33): 12102–12107.
Bibcode :
2004PNAS..10112102C .
doi :
10.1073/pnas.0404193101 .
PMC
514400 .
PMID
15304649 .
See also
References
^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Peck, G. W. (2002). "Kleitman and Combinatorics: A Celebration".
Discrete Mathematics . 257 (2–3): 193–224.
doi :
10.1016/S0012-365X(02)00595-2 .
MR
1935723 . (
article available on
Douglas West 's web page,
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign ).
^ "Kleitman, Daniel J.," in: Who's Who in Frontier Science and Technology , 1, 1984, p. 396.
^
Kleitman, Daniel J in American Men of Science , vol. 4, 2009
^ Kevin Coughlin (July 25, 2012).
"New park, plus tree plan, make for sunny summer day on Hillcrest Avenue in Morristown" . MorrisTownGreen.com . .
^
Daniel Kleitman at the
Mathematics Genealogy Project
^
a
b
"MIT Mathematics - Daniel Kleitman" . www-math.mit.edu. Archived from
the original on 2 April 2010. Retrieved 23 March 2010 .
^ Daniel J. Kleitman,
"My Career in the Movies," ,
Notices of the American Mathematical Society , 45 , 502 (April 1998)
^ Grossman, Jerry.
"Items of Interest Related to Erdös Numbers" . The Erdös Number Project .
Oakland University . Retrieved 24 August 2018 .
^ The publication states "Bruce R. Rothschild", a typographical error for "Bruce L. Rothschild".
External links
International National Academics