Bruce Reed (mathematician)

Bruce Reed at the Bellairs Research Institute, 2015

Bruce Alan Reed FRSC is a Canadian mathematician and computer scientist, the Canada Research Chair in Graph Theory and a professor of computer science at McGill University. His research is primarily in graph theory.^[1]

Academic career

Reed earned his Ph.D. in 1986 from McGill, under the supervision of Vašek Chvátal.^[2] Before returning to McGill as a Canada Research Chair, Reed held positions at the University of Waterloo, Carnegie Mellon University, and the French National Centre for Scientific Research.^[3]

Reed was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2009,^[4] and is the recipient of the 2013 CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize.^[5]

Research

Reed's thesis research concerned perfect graphs.^[2] With Michael Molloy, he is the author of a book on graph coloring and the probabilistic method.^[6] Reed has also published highly cited papers on the giant component in random graphs with a given degree sequence,^[7] random satisfiability problems,^[8] acyclic coloring,^[9] tree decomposition,^[10] and constructive versions of the Lovász local lemma.^[11]

He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2002.^[12] His talk there concerned a proof by Reed and Benny Sudakov, using the probabilistic method, of a conjecture by Kyoji Ohba that graphs whose number of vertices and chromatic number are (asymptotically) within a factor of two of each other have equal chromatic number and list chromatic number.^[13]

Selected publications

Articles

• Alon, Noga; McDiarmid, Colin; Reed, Bruce (1991), "Acyclic coloring of graphs", Random Structures & Algorithms, 2 (3): 277–288, doi:10.1002/rsa.3240020303, MR 1109695.
• Chvátal, V.; Reed, B. (1992), "Mick gets some (the odds are on his side)", Proc. 33rd Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, pp. 620–627, doi:10.1109/SFCS.1992.267789.
• Reed, Bruce A. (1992), "Finding approximate separators and computing tree width quickly", Proc. 24th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of computing, pp. 221–228, doi:10.1145/129712.129734.
• Molloy, Michael; Reed, Bruce (1995), "A critical point for random graphs with a given degree sequence", Random Structures & Algorithms, 6 (2-3): 161–179, doi:10.1002/rsa.3240060204, MR 1370952.
• Reed, B. A. (1997), "Tree width and tangles: a new connectivity measure and some applications", Surveys in combinatorics, 1997 (London), London Math. Soc. Lecture Note Ser., 241, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, pp. 87–162, doi:10.1017/CBO9780511662119.006, MR 1477746.
• Molloy, Michael; Reed, Bruce (1998a), "The size of the giant component of a random graph with a given degree sequence", Combinatorics, Probability and Computing, 7 (3): 295–305, doi:10.1017/S0963548398003526, MR 1664335.
• Molloy, Michael; Reed, Bruce (1998b), "Further algorithmic aspects of the local lemma", Proc. 30th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of computing, pp. 524–529, doi:10.1145/276698.276866.
• Reed, Bruce; Sudakov, Benny (2002), "List colouring of graphs with at most (2 − o(1))χ vertices", Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, Vol. III (Beijing, 2002), Higher Ed. Press, Beijing, pp. 587–603, arXiv:math/0304467, MR 1957563.

Books

• Molloy, Michael; Reed, Bruce (2002), Graph Colouring and the Probabilistic Method, Algorithms and Combinatorics, 23, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, ISBN 3-540-42139-4, MR 1869439.

References

1. Chairholders: Bruce A. Reed, Canada Research Chairs, retrieved 2012-10-07.
2. Bruce Reed at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
3. Past members, Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, retrieved 2012-10-07.
4. "Three McGill researchers elected RSC Fellows", McGill Reporter, October 1, 2009
5. Bruce Reed announced as 2013 CRM/Fields/PIMS Prize recipient, Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, retrieved 2012-12-30.
6. Kayll, P. Mark (2003). Graph Colouring and the Probabilistic Method. Mathematical Reviews, MR 1869439.
7. Molloy and Reed (1995, 1998a)
8. Chvátal & Reed (1992).
9. Alon, McDiarmid & Reed (1991).
10. Reed (1992, 1997).
11. Molloy & Reed (1998b).
12. ICM Plenary and Invited Speakers since 1897, International Mathematical Union, retrieved 2015-10-01.
13. Reed & Sudakov (2002).

External links

• Home page at McGill
• Bruce A. Reed at DBLP Bibliography Server
• Bruce Reed at Google Scholar