Robert Palmer Dilworth (December 2, 1914 – October 29, 1993) was an American

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

. His primary research area was

lattice theory A lattice is an abstract structure studied in the mathematical subdisciplines of order theory and abstract algebra. It consists of a partially ordered set in which every pair of elements has a unique supremum (also called a least upper bou ...

; his biography at the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive states "it would not be an exaggeration to say that he was one of the main factors in the subject moving from being merely a tool of other disciplines to an important subject in its own right". He is best known for Dilworth's theorem relating chains and antichains in

partial order In mathematics, especially order theory, a partial order on a set is an arrangement such that, for certain pairs of elements, one precedes the other. The word ''partial'' is used to indicate that not every pair of elements needs to be comparable ...

s; he was also the first to study

antimatroid In mathematics, an antimatroid is a formal system that describes processes in which a set is built up by including elements one at a time, and in which an element, once available for inclusion, remains available until it is included. Antimatroids ...

s . Dilworth was born in 1914 in

Hemet, California Hemet is a city in the San Jacinto Valley in Riverside County, California, United States. It covers a total area of , about half of the valley, which it shares with the neighboring city of San Jacinto, California, San Jacinto. The population w ...

, at that time a remote desert ranching town. He went to college at the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

, receiving his baccalaureate in 1936 and continuing there for his graduate studies. Dilworth's graduate advisor was Morgan Ward, a student of Eric Temple Bell, who was also on the Caltech faculty at the time. On receiving his Ph.D. in 1939, Dilworth took an instructorship at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

. While at Yale, he met and married his wife, Miriam White, with whom he eventually had two sons. He returned to Caltech as a faculty member in 1943, and spent the remainder of his academic career there. Dilworth advised 17 Ph.D. students and has 635 academic descendants listed at the

Mathematics Genealogy Project The Mathematics Genealogy Project (MGP) is a web-based database for the academic genealogy of mathematicians.. it contained information on 300,152 mathematical scientists who contributed to research-level mathematics. For a typical mathematicia ...

, many through his student Juris Hartmanis, a noted complexity theorist. Other notable mathematicians advised by Dilworth include Curtis Greene and Alfred W. Hales.

Selected bibliography

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References and external links

*. * *. {{DEFAULTSORT:Dilworth, Robert P. 20th-century American mathematicians Lattice theorists 1914 births 1993 deaths California Institute of Technology alumni California Institute of Technology faculty Yale University faculty People from Hemet, California Mathematicians from California