Ronald Graham, professor of computer and information science at the University of California, San Diego, will visit Gustavus Adolphus College as part of the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar program. He will give a public lecture, “Mathematics in the 21st Century: Problems and Prospects,” at 7:30 p.m. Monday, May 1 in F.W. Olin Hall of Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science, room 103, as well as speak with classes and student groups. His lecture will describe math problems that are difficult to solve and discuss the possibility that computers of the future might or might not aid in the solving of them.
Graham worked as a researcher at Bell Labs for 37 years, while holding visiting positions at Princeton University, Stanford University, California Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Los Angeles, and working as a part-time University Professor at Rutgers University. At the University of California, San Diego, he holds the Irwin and Joan Jacobs Chair of Computer and Information Science. Among the many awards he has received are the Pólya Prize in Combinatorics from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and the American Mathematical Society’s Steel Prize for lifetime achievement.
Under the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar program, distinguished scholars visit 100 colleges and universities with chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, spending two days on each campus. The purpose of the program is to allow for the exchange of ideas between visiting scholars and faculty and students. Since its inception in 1956, the program has sent 518 scholars on visits. Phi Beta Kappa was founded in 1776 and is the nation’s oldest academic honor society.
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