János Pach (born May 3, 1954) is a mathematician and computer scientist working in the fields of

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 ...

and discrete and computational geometry.

Biography

Pach was born and grew up in

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

. He comes from a noted academic family: his father, (1919–2001) was a well-known historian, and his mother Klára (née Sós, 1925–2020) was a university mathematics teacher; his maternal aunt Vera T. Sós and her husband

Pál Turán Pál Turán (; 18 August 1910 – 26 September 1976) also known as Paul Turán, was a Hungarian mathematician who worked primarily in extremal combinatorics. In 1940, because of his Jewish origins, he was arrested by History of the Jews in Hun ...

are two of the best-known Hungarian mathematicians. Pach received his

Candidate A candidate, or nominee, is a prospective recipient of an award or honor, or a person seeking or being considered for some kind of position. For example, one can be a candidate for membership in a group (sociology), group or election to an offic ...

degree from the

Hungarian Academy of Sciences The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( , MTA) is Hungary’s foremost and most prestigious learned society. Its headquarters are located along the banks of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. The Academy's primar ...

, in 1983, where his advisor was Miklós Simonovits. Since 1977, he has been affiliated with the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.Research Fellows
Rényi Institute He was Research Professor at the

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as Courant or CIMS) is the mathematics research school of New York University (NYU). Founded in 1935, it is named after Richard Courant, one of the founders of the Courant Institute ...

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

Personal website of János Pach
New York University (since 1986), Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a Public university, public research university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York ...

(1992-2011), and Neilson Professor at

Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts, United States. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smit ...

(2008-2009). Between 2008 and 2019, he was Professor of the Chair of Combinatorial Geometry at

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (, EPFL) is a public university, public research university in Lausanne, Switzerland, founded in 1969 with the mission to "train talented engineers in Switzerland". Like its sister institution E ...

.János Pach appointed as a full professor of mathematics
EPFL, December 12, 2007. He was the program chair for the

International Symposium on Graph Drawing The International Symposium on Graph Drawing (GD) is an annual academic conference in which researchers present peer reviewed papers on graph drawing, information visualization of Network theory, network information, geometric graph theory, and re ...

in 2004 and

Symposium on Computational Geometry The International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG) is an academic conference in computational geometry. Today its acronym is pronounced "sausage." It was founded in 1985, with the program committee consisting of David Dobkin, Joseph O'Rou ...

in 2015. He is co-editor-in-chief of the journal '' Discrete and Computational Geometry'', and he serves on the editorial boards of several other journals including ''

Combinatorica ''Combinatorica'' is an international journal of mathematics, publishing papers in the fields of combinatorics and computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theore ...

'', ''

SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics '' SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics'' is a peer-reviewed mathematics journal published quarterly by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). The journal includes articles on pure and applied discrete mathematics. It was es ...

'', ''Computational Geometry'', ''

Graphs and Combinatorics ''Graphs and Combinatorics'' (ISSN 0911-0119, abbreviated ''Graphs Combin.'') is a peer-reviewed academic journal in graph theory, combinatorics, and discrete geometry published by Springer Japan. Its editor-in-chief is Katsuhiro Ota of Keio Univ ...

'', ''Central European Journal of Mathematics'', and ''Moscow Journal of Combinatorics and Number Theory''. He was an invited speaker at the Combinatorics session of the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before ...

, in Seoul, 2014.List of Speakers at ICM.
/ref> He was a plenary speaker at the

European Congress of Mathematics The European Congress of Mathematics (ECM) is the second largest international conference of the mathematics community, after the International Congresses of Mathematicians (ICM). The ECM are held every four years and are timed precisely betwee ...

(Portorož), 2021.List of Plenary Speakers at ECM.
/ref>

Research

Pach has authored several books and over 300 research papers. He was one of the most frequent collaborators of

Paul Erdős Paul Erdős ( ; 26March 191320September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. pursued and proposed problems in discrete mathematics, g ...

, authoring over 20 papers with him and thus 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 individual ...

of one. Pach's research is focused in the areas of

and

discrete geometry Discrete geometry and combinatorial geometry are branches of geometry that study combinatorial properties and constructive methods of discrete geometric objects. Most questions in discrete geometry involve finite or discrete sets of basic geom ...

. In 1981, he solved Ulam's problem, showing that there exists no universal planar graph. In the early 90sAMS Meeting
/ref> together with Micha Perles, he initiated the systematic study of extremal problems on topological and geometric graphs. Some of Pach's most-cited research work concerns the combinatorial complexity of families of curves in the plane and their applications to

motion planning Motion planning, also path planning (also known as the navigation problem or the piano mover's problem) is a computational problem to find a sequence of valid configurations that moves the object from the source to destination. The term is used ...

problems the maximum number of k-sets and halving lines that a planar point set may have, crossing numbers of graphs, embedding of

planar graph In graph theory, a planar graph is a graph (discrete mathematics), graph that can be graph embedding, embedded in the plane (geometry), plane, i.e., it can be drawn on the plane in such a way that its edges intersect only at their endpoints. ...

s onto fixed sets of points, and lower bounds for epsilon-nets.. .

Awards and honors

Pach received the Grünwald Medal of the

János Bolyai Mathematical Society The János Bolyai Mathematical Society (Bolyai János Matematikai Társulat, BJMT) is the Hungarian mathematical society, named after János Bolyai, a 19th-century Hungarian mathematician, a co-discoverer of non-Euclidean geometry. It is the profe ...

(1982), the

Lester R. Ford Award ''The American Mathematical Monthly'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of mathematics. It was established by Benjamin Finkel in 1894 and is published by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the Mathematical Association of America. It is an expositor ...

from the

Mathematical Association of America The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary edu ...

(1990), and the

Alfréd Rényi Prize The Alfréd Rényi Prize is awarded biennially by the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics of the Hungarian Academy of Science in honor of founder Alfréd Rényi. By the current rules it is given to one or two fellows of the Institute in recog ...

from the

(1992). He was an Erdős Lecturer at

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

in 2005. In 2011 he was listed as a

fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of 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 ...

for his research in computational geometry. In 2014 he was elected as a member of

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

, and in 2015 as a

of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

"for contributions to discrete and combinatorial geometry and to convexity and combinatorics." In 2022 he was elected corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences..

Books

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References

External links