Herbert John Ryser (July 28, 1923, Milwaukee, Wisconsin — July 12, 1985, Pasadena, California) was a professor of mathematics, widely regarded as one of the major figures in combinatorics in the 20th century.[1][2] He is the namesake of the Bruck–Ryser theorem and Ryser's formula for the computation of the permanent of a matrix.
Contents |
Herbert John Ryser was born to the family of Fred G. and Edna (Huels) Ryser. He received B.A. (1945), M.A. (1947), and Ph.D. (1948) from the University of Wisconsin.[3] His doctoral thesis "Rational Vector Spaces" was supervised by Cornelius Joseph Everett, Jr. and Cyrus C. MacDuffee,[4] being Everett's only doctoral student.[5]
After his Ph.D., Ryser spent a year at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, then joined the faculty of Ohio State University. In 1962 he took a professorship at Syracuse University, and in 1967 moved to Caltech.[6]
Ryser contributed to the theory of combinatorial designs, finite set systems, the permanent, combinatorial functions, and to many other topics in combinatorics.[1]. For many years, Ryser served as editor of the Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Linear and Multilinear algebra, and the Journal of Algebra.[1] Ryser's estate funded an endowment creating undergraduate mathematics scholarships at Caltech known as the H. J. Ryser Scholarships.[7]
The Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series A denoted two issues after Ryser's passing as the "Herbert J. Ryser Memorial Issue", parts 1 and 2.[8]