Neil J. Calkin (born 29 March 1961) is a professor at

Clemson University Clemson University () is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university near Clemson, South Carolina, United States. - The blue-shaded pattern denotes university property. This shows Clemson University is ''out ...

in the Algebra and Discrete Mathematics group of the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences. His interests are in combinatorial and probabilistic methods, mainly as applied to

number theory Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic functions. Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers (for example ...

. Together with

Herbert Wilf Herbert Saul Wilf (June 13, 1931 – January 7, 2012) was an American mathematician, specializing in combinatorics and graph theory. He was the Thomas A. Scott Professorship of Mathematics, Thomas A. Scott Professor of Mathematics in Combinatori ...

he founded The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics in 1994. He and Wilf developed the Calkin–Wilf tree and the associated Calkin–Wilf sequence.

Biography

Neil Calkin was born 29 March 1961, in

Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The city, located in Hartford County, Connecticut, Hartford County, had a population of 121,054 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 ce ...

and moved to the UK around the age of 3. He grew up there and studied mathematics at Trinity College Cambridge before moving to Canada in 1984 to study in the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization at the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a Public university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...

where he was awarded a PhD (1988) for his thesis "Sum-Free Sets and Measure Spaces" written under the supervision of Ian Peter Goulden. He was the Zeev Nehari Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

(1988—1991), an assistant professor at

Georgia Tech The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Established in 1885, it has the lar ...

(1991—1997), and joined the Algebra and Discrete Mathematics group of the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences at Clemson University in 1997. Calkin 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 1. He was one of the last people to collaborate with

Erdős Erdős, Erdos, or Erdoes is a Hungarian surname. Paul Erdős (1913–1996), Hungarian mathematician Other people with the surname * Ágnes Erdős (1950–2021), Hungarian politician * Brad Erdos (born 1990), Canadian football player * Éva Erd� ...

and once said of him, "One of my greatest regrets is that I didn't know him when he was a million times faster than most people. When I knew him he was only hundreds of times faster."''My Brain Is Open : The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos'' (1998) by Bruce Schechter, p. 119

Selected papers

* * * *

Books

References

External links

Neil Calkin at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

{{DEFAULTSORT:Calkin, Neil 20th-century English mathematicians 21st-century English mathematicians Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge University of Waterloo alumni Clemson University faculty Mathematicians from South Carolina Combinatorial game theorists Recreational mathematicians Mathematics popularizers Combinatorialists Probability theorists British number theorists 1961 births Living people