Cecil Clyde Rousseau, Jr. (January 13, 1938

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

- April 10, 2020

Memphis Memphis most commonly refers to: * Memphis, Egypt, a former capital of ancient Egypt * Memphis, Tennessee, a major American city Memphis may also refer to: Places United States * Memphis, Alabama * Memphis, Florida * Memphis, Indiana * Memp ...

) was a

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 ...

and author who specialized in

graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of '' graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conn ...

and

combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many a ...

. He was a professor at The

University of Memphis } The University of Memphis (UofM) is a public university, public research university in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1912, the university has an enrollment of more than 22,000 students. The university maintains the Herff College of Engineering ...

starting in 1970 until retiring in 2008, and was involved with

USAMO The United States of America Mathematical Olympiad (USAMO) is a highly selective high school mathematics competition held annually in the United States. Since its debut in 1972, it has served as the final round of the American Mathematics Comp ...

in many capacities, including serving as chair. Rousseau received his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

in Physics in 1968 from

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

. He has an

Erdős number The Erdős number () describes the "collaborative distance" between mathematician Paul Erdős and another person, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers. The same principle has been applied in other fields where a particular individua ...

of 1, and is Erdős' 5th most common co-author, with 35 joint papers. He also frequently collaborated with Memphis faculty Ralph Faudree and Dick Schelp. In 2012, Rousseau received the

Paul Erdős Award The Paul Erdős Award, named after Paul Erdős, is given by the World Federation of National Mathematics Competitions for those who "have played a significant role in the development of mathematical challenges at the national or international leve ...

from the World Federation of National Mathematics Competitions. To his students and colleagues, he was known affectionately as C²R.

References

External links

Mini-profile at the University of MemphisList of Publications
1938 births 2020 deaths Graph theorists Texas A&M University alumni University of Memphis faculty Mathematicians from Philadelphia {{US-mathematician-stub