Reinhard Diestel (born 1959) is a German mathematician specializing in

graph theory In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of ''graph (discrete mathematics), graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of ''Vertex (graph ...

, including the interplay among

graph minor In graph theory, an undirected graph is called a minor of the graph if can be formed from by deleting edges, vertices and by contracting edges. The theory of graph minors began with Wagner's theorem that a graph is planar if and only if ...

matroid theory In combinatorics, a matroid is a structure that abstracts and generalizes the notion of linear independence in vector spaces. There are many equivalent ways to define a matroid Axiomatic system, axiomatically, the most significant being in terms ...

tree decomposition In graph theory, a tree decomposition is a mapping of a Graph (discrete mathematics), graph into a tree (graph theory), tree that can be used to define the treewidth of the graph and speed up solving certain computational problems on the graph. ...

, and infinite graphs. He holds the chair of discrete mathematics at the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (, also referred to as UHH) is a public university, public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('':de:Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen, ...

Education and career

Diestel has a Ph.D. from the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

in England, completed in 1986. His dissertation, ''Simplicial Decompositions and Universal Graphs'', was supervised by

Béla Bollobás Béla Bollobás FRS (born 3 August 1943) is a Hungarian-born British mathematician who has worked in various areas of mathematics, including functional analysis, combinatorics, graph theory, and percolation. He was strongly influenced by Paul E ...

. He continued at Cambridge as a fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge until 1990. In 1994, he took a professorship at the

Chemnitz University of Technology Chemnitz University of Technology () is a public university in Chemnitz, Germany. With around 8,300 students, it is the third largest university in Saxony. It was founded in 1836 as ''Königliche Gewerbschule'' (Royal Mercantile College) and ...

, and in 1999 he was given his current chair at the University of Hamburg. At Hamburg, his doctoral students have included

Daniela Kühn Daniela Kühn (born 1973) is a German mathematician and the Mason Professor in Mathematics at the University of Birmingham in Birmingham, England.

and

Maya Stein Maya Jakobine Stein is a German mathematician working as a professor at the Department of Mathematical Engineering of the University of Chile. She is also the vice director and the academic director of the Center for Mathematical Modeling of the U ...

Books

Diestel's books include: *''Graph Decompositions: A Study in Infinite Graph Theory'' (Oxford University Press, 1990) *''Graph Theory'' (

Graduate Texts in Mathematics Graduate Texts in Mathematics (GTM) () is a series of graduate-level textbooks in mathematics published by Springer-Verlag. The books in this series, like the other Springer-Verlag mathematics series, are yellow books of a standard size (with va ...

173, Springer, 1997; 6th ed., 2024). Originally published in German as ''Graphentheorie'' (1996), and translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. *''Tangles: A Structural Approach to Artificial Intelligence in the Empirical Sciences'' (Cambridge University Press, 2024; )

References

External links

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including free online preview version {{DEFAULTSORT:Diestel, Reinhard 1959 births Living people German mathematicians Graph theorists Alumni of the University of Cambridge Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge Academic staff of the Chemnitz University of Technology Academic staff of the University of Hamburg