Ferran Hurtado Díaz (8 May 1951 – 2 October 2014) was a Spanish
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
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...
known for his research in
computational geometry.
Life
Hurtado was born on 8 May 1951 in
Valencia
Valencia ( , ), formally València (), is the capital of the Province of Valencia, province and Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Valencian Community, the same name in Spain. It is located on the banks of the Turia (r ...
, Spain.
He earned his Ph.D. degree from the
Polytechnic University of Catalonia
The Polytechnic University of Catalonia (, , ; UPC), currently referred to as BarcelonaTech, is the largest polytechnic university in Catalonia, Spain.
UPC's objectives are based on internationalization, as it is one of Europe's techni ...
in
Barcelona
Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...
in 1993 under the supervision of Oriol Serra Albó; his dissertation was ''Problemas geométricos de visibilidad''
'Geometric problems of visibility'' It won the ''Premio Extraordinario de Doctorado UPC'' in 1995.
He became a professor at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia,
and died on 2 October 2014 in Barcelona.
Contributions
Hurtado was a pioneer of Spanish
computational geometry, and of connections between computational geometry and
combinatorics
Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and as an end to obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many ...
. He is known, not only for his own research contributions to those subjects, but also for the questions he posed for others to solve. The topics of his research included
flip graph
In mathematics, a flip graph is a graph whose vertices are combinatorial or geometric objects, and whose edges link two of these objects when they can be obtained from one another by an elementary operation called a flip. Flip graphs are speci ...
s of
polygon triangulation
In computational geometry, polygon triangulation is the partition of a polygonal area (simple polygon) into a set of triangles, i.e., finding a set of triangles with pairwise non-intersecting interiors whose union is .
Triangulations may ...
s,
Voronoi diagram
In mathematics, a Voronoi diagram is a partition of a plane into regions close to each of a given set of objects. It can be classified also as a tessellation. In the simplest case, these objects are just finitely many points in the plane (calle ...
s,
visibility
In meteorology, visibility is the measure of the distance at which an object or light can be clearly discerned. It depends on the Transparency and translucency, transparency of the surrounding air and as such, it is unchanging no matter the amb ...
,
simple polygon
In geometry, a simple polygon is a polygon that does not Intersection (Euclidean geometry), intersect itself and has no holes. That is, it is a Piecewise linear curve, piecewise-linear Jordan curve consisting of finitely many line segments. The ...
s with given points as vertices,
empty convex polygons in point sets,
geometric graph theory
Geometric graph theory in the broader sense is a large and amorphous subfield of graph theory, concerned with graphs defined by geometric means. In a stricter sense, geometric graph theory studies combinatorial and geometric properties of geomet ...
, and problems on colored sets of points.
Recognition
In 2018, the journal ''
Computational Geometry'' published a special issue in Hurtado's memory.
References
External links
Ferran Hurtado's personal webpageFerran Hurtado Memorial*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hurtado, Ferran
1951 births
2014 deaths
Spanish computer scientists
Theoretical computer scientists
Researchers in geometric algorithms