Mechthild Maria Stoer is a German applied mathematician and

operations research Operations research () (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve management and ...

er known for her work on the minimum cut problem and in

network design Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

. She is one of the namesakes of the

Stoer–Wagner algorithm In graph theory, the Stoer–Wagner algorithm is a recursive algorithm to solve the minimum cut problem in Undirected graph, undirected weighted graphs with non-negative weights. It was proposed by Mechthild Stoer and Frank Wagner in 1995. The ess ...

for minimum cuts, which she published with Frank Wagner in 1994.

Education and career

Stoer was a master's student of Martin Grötschel at the

University of Augsburg The University of Augsburg () is a university located in the Universitätsviertel section of Augsburg, Germany. It was founded in 1970 and is organized in 8 Faculties. The University of Augsburg is a relatively young campus university with a ...

in Germany, receiving a diploma in 1987 with the thesis ''Dekompositionstechniken beim Travelling Salesman Problem''. She continued working with Grötschel in Augsburg for a Ph.D.; her 1992 dissertation, ''Design of Survivable Networks'', was also published by

Springer-Verlag Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 in ...

in the series

Lecture Notes in Mathematics ''Lecture Notes in Mathematics'' is a book series in the field of mathematics, including articles related to both research and teaching. It was established in 1964 and was edited by A. Dold, Heidelberg and B. Eckmann, Zürich. Its publisher is Sp ...

(vol. 1531, 1992). After completing her doctorate she worked for

Telenor Telenor ASA ( or ) is a Norwegian majority state-owned multinational telecommunications company headquartered at Fornebu in Bærum, close to Oslo. It is one of the world's largest mobile telecommunications companies with operations worldwi ...

in Norway, focusing on the applications of

combinatorial optimization Combinatorial optimization is a subfield of mathematical optimization that consists of finding an optimal object from a finite set of objects, where the set of feasible solutions is discrete or can be reduced to a discrete set. Typical combina ...

telecommunication Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...

Recognition

Stoer's work on minimum cuts received the inaugural European Symposium on Algorithms Test-of-Time Award in 2015. The award citation states that "The algorithm continues to be taught because of its elegance and used because of its efficiency and ease of implementation."

Selected publications

* * * * *; previously announced in 1994 at the ''European Symposium on Algorithms'',

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stoer, Mechthild Year of birth missing (living people) Living people German applied mathematicians German women mathematicians Operations researchers University of Augsburg alumni