Yousef Alavi

Yousef Alavi (March 19, 1928 – May 21, 2013)[1] was an Iranian born American mathematician who specialized in combinatorics and graph theory. He received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1958.[2] He was a professor of mathematics at Western Michigan University from 1958 until his retirement in 1996;[3] he chaired the department from 1989 to 1992.[4] Alavi's Erdős number is 1 due to eight joint papers with Paul Erdős, who frequently visited him in Kalamazoo.[5][6] In 1987 he received the first Distinguished Service Award of the Michigan Section of the Mathematical Association of America due to his 30 years of service to the MAA; at that time, the Michigan House and Senate issued a special resolution honoring him.[7]

References

  1. ↑ "Yousef Alavi", Kalamazoo Gazette, May 23, 2013.
  2. ↑ Yousef Alavi at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. ↑ Emeritus faculty, Western Michigan University mathematics department.
  4. ↑ History of the department, Western Michigan University mathematics department.
  5. ↑ Erdős number project. Archived 1 February 2010 at WebCite
  6. ↑ Baker, A.; Bollobás, B. (1999), "Paul Erdős. 26 March 1913–20 September 1996", Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 45: 148–164, doi:10.1098/rsbm.1999.0044.
  7. ↑ Michigan Section's Award Recipients.