Daniel Kleitman
American mathematician (born 1934)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
- Cornell University (1954)
- Harvard University (1958)
Daniel Kleitman | |
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| Born | October 4, 1934 |
| Education |
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| Spouse | Sharon Ruth Alexander |
| Children | 3 |
| Scientific career | |
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| Institutions | |
| Thesis | Static Properties of Heavy Fermi-Particles; Deuteron-Nucleon Scattering at High Enery (1958) |
| Doctoral advisor | |
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]
In 1973 Kleitman was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[9]
In 2024 Kleitman was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences.[10]
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.[11]
- 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.