Robert (Rob) Morris is a mathematician who works in

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 ...

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 ...

and

Ramsey theory Ramsey theory, named after the British mathematician and philosopher Frank P. Ramsey, is a branch of the mathematical field of combinatorics that focuses on the appearance of order in a substructure given a structure of a known size. Problems in R ...

. He is a researcher at

IMPA is a high-fantasy video game series created by Japanese game designers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka. It is primarily developed and published by Nintendo, although some portable installments have been outsourced to Capcom, Vanpool and ...

. He graduated with a Ph.D. from The University of Memphis in 2006 under the supervision of

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 ...

. In 2015, Morris was awarded the

European Prize in Combinatorics The European Prize in Combinatorics is a prize for research in combinatorics, a mathematical discipline, which is awarded biennially at Eurocomb, the European conference on combinatorics, graph theory, and applications.. The prize was first awarde ...

for "his profound results in extremal and probabilistic combinatorics particularly for his result on independent sets in hypergraphs which found immediately several applications in

additive number theory Additive number theory is the subfield of number theory concerning the study of subsets of integers and their behavior under addition. More abstractly, the field of additive number theory includes the study of abelian groups and commutative semigro ...

and combinatorics, such as the solution of old problem of

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 for establishing tight bounds for Ramsey numbers, and also on random

cellular automata A cellular automaton (pl. cellular automata, abbrev. CA) is a discrete model of computation studied in automata theory. Cellular automata are also called cellular spaces, tessellation automata, homogeneous structures, cellular structures, tessel ...

and bootstrap problems in percolation." In 2016, he was one of the winners of the

George Pólya Prize The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) has three prizes named after George Pólya: the George Pólya Prize for Mathematical Exposition, established in 2013; the George Pólya Prize in Applied Combinatorics, established in 1969, ...

. In 2018, he was awarded the

Fulkerson Prize The Fulkerson Prize for outstanding papers in the area of discrete mathematics is sponsored jointly by the Mathematical Optimization Society (MOS) and the American Mathematical Society (AMS). Up to three awards of $1,500 each are presented at e ...

. Also in 2018, he was an invited speaker at 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 ...

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of Rio de Janeiro. It is the List of cities in Brazil by population, second-most-populous city in Brazil (after São Paulo) and the Largest cities in the America ...

. In 2024, Morris received the

Leroy P. Steele Prize The Leroy P. Steele Prizes are awarded every year by the American Mathematical Society, for distinguished research work and writing in the field of mathematics. Since 1993, there has been a formal division into three categories. The prizes have b ...

for Seminal Contribution to Research jointly with József Balogh and Wojciech Samotij.Leroy P. Steele Prize 2024
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References

Probability theorists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada researchers Combinatorialists {{academic-bio-stub