Andrew Michael Odlyzko (Andrzej Odłyżko) (born 23 July 1949) is a

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

mathematician and a former head of the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

's Digital Technology Center and of the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute. He began his career in 1975 at

Bell Telephone Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

, where he stayed for 26 years before joining the

in 2001.

Work in mathematics

Odlyzko received his B.S. and M.S. in mathematics from 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 ...

and his Ph.D. from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

in 1975. In the field of mathematics he has published extensively on

analytic number theory In mathematics, analytic number theory is a branch of number theory that uses methods from mathematical analysis to solve problems about the integers. It is often said to have begun with Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet's 1837 introduction of Dir ...

computational number theory In mathematics and computer science, computational number theory, also known as algorithmic number theory, is the study of computational methods for investigating and solving problems in number theory and arithmetic geometry, including algorithm ...

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logy, -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of Adversary (cryptography), ...

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

s and

computational complexity In computer science, the computational complexity or simply complexity of an algorithm is the amount of resources required to run it. Particular focus is given to computation time (generally measured by the number of needed elementary operations ...

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 ...

probability Probability is a branch of mathematics and statistics concerning events and numerical descriptions of how likely they are to occur. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1; the larger the probability, the more likely an e ...

, and

error-correcting code In computing, telecommunication, information theory, and coding theory, forward error correction (FEC) or channel coding is a technique used for controlling errors in data transmission over unreliable or noisy communication channels. The centra ...

s. In the early 1970s, he was a co-author (with D. Kahaner and

Gian-Carlo Rota Gian-Carlo Rota (April 27, 1932 – April 18, 1999) was an Italian-American mathematician and philosopher. He spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked in combinatorics, functional analysis, proba ...

) of one of the founding papers of the modern

umbral calculus The term umbral calculus has two related but distinct meanings. In mathematics, before the 1970s, umbral calculus referred to the surprising similarity between seemingly unrelated polynomial equations and certain shadowy techniques used to prove ...

. In 1985 he and

Herman te Riele Hermanus Johannes Joseph te Riele (born 5 January 1947) is a Dutch mathematician at CWI in Amsterdam with a specialization in computational number theory. He is known for proving the correctness of the Riemann hypothesis for the first 1.5 billio ...

disproved the

Mertens conjecture In mathematics, the Mertens conjecture is the statement that the Mertens function M(n) is bounded by \pm\sqrt. Although now disproven, it had been shown to imply the Riemann hypothesis. It was conjectured by Thomas Joannes Stieltjes, in an 1885 ...

. In mathematics, he is probably known best for his work on the

Riemann zeta function The Riemann zeta function or Euler–Riemann zeta function, denoted by the Greek letter (zeta), is a mathematical function of a complex variable defined as \zeta(s) = \sum_^\infty \frac = \frac + \frac + \frac + \cdots for and its analytic c ...

, which led to the invention of improved algorithms, including the

Odlyzko–Schönhage algorithm In mathematics, the Odlyzko–Schönhage algorithm is a fast algorithm for evaluating the Riemann zeta function at many points, introduced by . The main point is the use of the fast Fourier transform to speed up the evaluation of a finite Dirichl ...

, and large-scale computations, which stimulated extensive research on connections between the zeta function and

random matrix In probability theory and mathematical physics, a random matrix is a matrix-valued random variable—that is, a matrix in which some or all of its entries are sampled randomly from a probability distribution. Random matrix theory (RMT) is the ...

theory. As a direct collaborator 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 ...

, he has

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 ...

Work on electronic communication

More recently, he has worked on

communication network A telecommunications network is a group of nodes interconnected by telecommunications links that are used to exchange messages between the nodes. The links may use a variety of technologies based on the methodologies of circuit switching, messa ...

electronic publishing Electronic publishing (also referred to as e-publishing, digital publishing, or online publishing) includes the digital publication of e-books, digital magazines, and the development of digital libraries and catalogues. It also includes the ed ...

economics of security The economics of information security addresses the economic aspects of privacy and computer security. Economics of information security includes models of the strictly rational “homo economicus” as well as behavioral economics. Economics of se ...

and

electronic commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to Commerce, commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling Goods and services, products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on tec ...

. In 1998, he and Kerry Coffman were the first to show that one of the great inspirations for the Internet bubble, the myth of "Internet traffic doubling every 100 days," was false. In the paper "Content is Not King", published in ''

First Monday ''First Monday'' is an American legal drama television series which aired on CBS during the midseason replacement from January 15 to May 3, 2002. The series centered on the U.S. Supreme Court. Like another 2002 series, '' The Court'', it was i ...

'' in January 2001, he argues that # the

entertainment industry Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and Interest (emotion), interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but it is more likely to be one of the activities or events that have deve ...

is a small industry compared with other industries, notably the

telecommunications industry The telecommunications industry within the sector of information and communication technology comprises all telecommunication/ telephone companies and Internet service providers, and plays a crucial role in the evolution of mobile communications ...

; # people are more interested in

communication Communication is commonly defined as the transmission of information. Its precise definition is disputed and there are disagreements about whether Intention, unintentional or failed transmissions are included and whether communication not onl ...

than

entertainment Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and Interest (emotion), interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but it is more likely to be one of the activities or events that have deve ...

; # and therefore that entertainment "content" is not the

killer app A killer application (often shortened to killer app) is any software that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as its host computer hardware, video game console, software platform, or operati ...

for the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

. In 2012, he became a fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research and in 2013 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, ...

Network value

In the 2006 paper "Metcalfe's Law is Wrong","Metcalfe's Law is Wrong"
Bob Briscoe, Andrew Odlyzko, and Benjamin Tilly, July 2006 IEEE Spectrum. Andrew Odlyzko and coauthors argue that the incremental value of adding one person to a network of ''n'' people is approximately the ''n''th

harmonic number In mathematics, the -th harmonic number is the sum of the reciprocals of the first natural numbers: H_n= 1+\frac+\frac+\cdots+\frac =\sum_^n \frac. Starting from , the sequence of harmonic numbers begins: 1, \frac, \frac, \frac, \frac, \dot ...

, so the total value of the network is approximately ''n'' * log(''n)''. Since this curves upward (unlike Sarnoff's law), it implies that Metcalfe's conclusion – that there is a

critical mass In nuclear engineering, critical mass is the minimum mass of the fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction in a particular setup. The critical mass of a fissionable material depends upon its nuclear properties (specific ...

in networks, leading to a

network effect In economics, a network effect (also called network externality or demand-side economies of scale) is the phenomenon by which the Value (economics), value or utility a user derives from a Goods, good or Service (economics), service depends on th ...

– is qualitatively correct. But since this linearithmic function does not grow as rapidly as

Metcalfe's law Metcalfe's law states that the financial value or influence of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (2). The law is named after Robert Metcalfe and was first proposed in 1980 ...

, it implies that many of the quantitative expectations based on Metcalfe's law were excessively optimistic. For example, by Metcalfe, if a hypothetical network of 100,000 members has a value of $1M, doubling its membership would increase its value fourfold (200,000²/100,000²). However Odlyzko predicts its value would only slightly more than double: 200,000*log(200,000)/(100,000*log(100,000). Empirical tests, in part stimulated by this criticism, strongly support Metcalfe's law.

Financial History

In recent years, Odlyzko has published multiple papers on the financial history of bubbles, particularly the

South Sea Bubble South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both west and east. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþa ...

and the English Railway Mania of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, respectively.

References

External links

Andrew Odlyzko: Home Page

Digital Technology Center
at the

* Andrew Odlyzko
Tragic loss or good riddance? The impending demise of traditional scholarly journals
* Andrew Odlyzko
Content is Not King
''First Monday'', Vol. 6, No. 2 (5 February 2001).

at

MathWorld ''MathWorld'' is an online mathematics reference work, created and largely written by Eric W. Weisstein. It is sponsored by and licensed to Wolfram Research, Inc. and was partially funded by the National Science Foundation's National Science ...