Jeffrey Shallit
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Jeffrey Outlaw Shallit (born October 17, 1957) is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is an active number theorist and a noted critic of
intelligent design Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins".#Numbers 2006, Numbers 2006, p. 373; " Dcaptured headlines for it ...
. He is married to Anna Lubiw, also a computer scientist.


Early life and education

Shallit was born in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
, in 1957. His father was journalist Joseph Shallit, the son of
Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
immigrants from Vitebsk,
Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
(now in
Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...
). His mother was Louise Lee Outlaw Shallit, a writer. He has one brother, Jonathan Shallit, a music professor. Shallit earned a
Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...
(B.A.) in
mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
from
Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
in June 1979. He received a Ph.D., also in mathematics, from the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
, in June 1983. His doctoral thesis was entitled ''Metric Theory of Pierce Expansions'' and his advisor was
Manuel Blum Manuel Blum (born 26 April 1938) is a Venezuelan-born American computer scientist who received the Turing Award in 1995 "In recognition of his contributions to the foundations of computational complexity theory and its application to cryptography ...
.


Advocacy

Since 1996, Shallit has held the position of Vice-President of Electronic Frontier Canada. In 1997, he gained attention for the publication on the Internet of ''Holocaust Revised: Lies of Our Times'' (also called the ''Shallit Report''), a reprint of an article he had written for a Waterloo student publication in 1993, which detailed the backgrounds and past statements of various persons whom he accused of being Holocaust deniers, notably David Irving, Fred A. Leuchter, and Eustace Mullins. This triggered a public exchange of letters between him and Irving. Shallit has been a critic of the work of William Dembski promoting intelligent design. He has coauthored a paper with Wesley Elsberry demonstrating problems with Dembski's mathematical work, and would have appeared as a witness opposing Dembski in the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial had Dembski not dropped out.


Professional life

Shallit is a Professor in the School of Computer Science at the
University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a Public university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...
and the editor-in-chief of the '' Journal of Integer Sequences''. His primary academic interests are combinatorics on words,
formal languages In logic, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics, a formal language is a set of string (computer science), strings whose symbols are taken from a set called "#Definition, alphabet". The alphabet of a formal language consists of symbol ...
, automata theory, and algorithmic number theory. He has been recognized by the
Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...
as a Distinguished Scientist (2008). His publications include the books ''Algorithmic Number Theory'' (with Eric Bach), a noted text on
algorithms In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for per ...
, ''Automatic Sequences: Theory, Applications, Generalizations'' (with ), and ''A Second Course in Formal Languages and Automata Theory''.


See also

*
List of University of Waterloo people The University of Waterloo, located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is a comprehensive public university that was founded in 1957 by Drs. Gerry Hagey and Ira G. Needles. It has grown into an institution of more than 42,000 students, faculty, and st ...


References


External links


Home page of Jeffrey O. ShallitShallit's blog, RecursivityElectronic Frontier Canada

Holocaust Revised: Lies of our Times
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shallit, Jeffrey 1957 births Living people Academic staff of the University of Waterloo American computer scientists American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent American critics of creationism IBM employees I. P. Sharp Associates employees Mathematicians from Philadelphia American number theorists Princeton University alumni Scientists from Philadelphia