Jiří Matoušek (mathematician)
Czech mathematician (1963–2015)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jiří (Jirka) Matoušek (10 March 1963 – 9 March 2015) was a Czech mathematician working in computational geometry and algebraic topology. He was a professor at Charles University in Prague and the author of several textbooks and research monographs.
Jiří Matoušek | |
|---|---|
Jiří Matoušek at the Mathematical Research Institute of Oberwolfach, 2005 | |
| Born | 10 March 1963 |
| Died | 9 March 2015 (aged 51) |
| Alma mater | Charles University |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | |
Biography
Matoušek was born in Prague. In 1986, he received his Master's degree at Charles University under Miroslav Katětov.[1] From 1986 until his death he was employed at the Department of Applied Mathematics of Charles University, holding a professor position since 2000. He was also a visiting and later full professor at ETH Zurich.[2]
In 1996, he won the European Mathematical Society prize[3] and in 2000 he won the Scientist award of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic.[4] In 1998 he was an Invited Speaker of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin.[5] He became a fellow of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic in 2005.[6]
Matoušek's paper on computational aspects of algebraic topology won the Best Paper award at the 2012 ACM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms.[7]
Aside from his own academic writing, he has translated the popularization book Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction by Timothy Gowers into Czech.[8] He was a supporter and signatory of the Cost of Knowledge protest.[9]
Matoušek died in 2015, aged 51.[2][10] In 2021, a lecture hall at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, was named after him.[11]
Books
- Invitation to Discrete Mathematics (with Jaroslav Nešetřil). Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0-19-850207-4. Translated into French by Delphine Hachez as Introduction aux Mathématiques Discrètes, Springer-Verlag, 2004, ISBN 978-2-287-20010-6.
- Geometric Discrepancy: An Illustrated Guide. Springer-Verlag, Algorithms and Combinatorics 18, 1999, ISBN 978-3-540-65528-2.[12]
- Lectures on Discrete Geometry. Springer-Verlag, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, 2002, ISBN 978-0-387-95373-1.[13][14][15]
- Using the Borsuk-Ulam Theorem: Lectures on Topological Methods in Combinatorics and Geometry. Springer-Verlag, 2003. ISBN 978-3-540-00362-5.[16][17]
- Topics in Discrete Mathematics: Dedicated to Jarik Nešetřil on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday (with Martin Klazar, Jan Kratochvíl, Martin Loebl, Robin Thomas, and Pavel Valtr). Springer-Verlag, Algorithms and Combinatorics 26, 2006. ISBN 978-3-540-33698-3.
- Understanding and Using Linear Programming (with B. Gärtner). Springer-Verlag, Universitext, 2007, ISBN 978-3-540-30697-9.[18]
- Thirty-three miniatures — Mathematical and algorithmic applications of linear algebra. American Mathematical Society, 2010, ISBN 978-0-8218-4977-4.[19][20][21]
- Approximation Algorithms and Semidefinite Programming (with B. Gärtner). Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012, ISBN 978-3-642-22014-2.[22]
- Mathematics++: Selected Topics Beyond the Basic Courses (with Ida Kantor and Robert Šámal). American Mathematical Society, 2015, ISBN 978-1-4704-2261-5.