Summary
James Anthony Dominic Welsh (known professionally as D.J.A. Welsh, 29 August 1938 – 30 November 2023)[1][2][3] was an English mathematician and emeritus professor of Oxford University's Mathematical Institute. He was an expert in matroid theory,[4] the computational complexity of combinatorial enumeration problems, percolation theory, and cryptography.
Biography
editWelsh obtained his Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford University under the supervision of John Hammersley.[5] After working as a researcher at Bell Laboratories, he joined the Mathematical Institute in 1963 and became a fellow of Merton College, Oxford in 1966. He chaired the British Combinatorial Committee from 1983 to 1987.[3] Welsh was given a personal chair in 1992 and retired in 2005.[3] He supervised 28 doctoral students.[6]
Books
edit- Matroid Theory (LMS Monographs, vol. 8, Academic Press, 1976, MR0427112, reprinted by Dover Publications, 2010, ISBN 978-0486474397)
- Probability: An Introduction (with Geoffrey Grimmett, Oxford University Press, 1986, ISBN 0-19-853264-4, MR0869591)
- Codes and Cryptography (Oxford University Press, 1988, ISBN 978-0198532873, MR0959137)
- Complexity: Knots, Colourings and Counting (LMS Lecture Notes, vol. 186, Oxford University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-521-45740-8, MR1245272)
- Complexity and Cryptography: An Introduction (with John Talbot, Cambridge University Press, 2006, MR2221458)[7]
Awards and honours
editWelsh received an honorary doctorate from the University of Waterloo in 2006.[3]
In 2007, Oxford University press published Combinatorics, Complexity, and Chance: A Tribute to Dominic Welsh, an edited volume of research papers dedicated to Welsh.[8]
The Russo–Seymour–Welsh estimate in percolation theory is partly named after Welsh.
References
edit- ^ Merton College announcement
- ^ Levens, R.G.C., ed. (1964), Merton College Register 1900-1964, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, p. 497
- ^ a b c d Prof Dominic J A Welsh, Debrett's, retrieved 2012-03-11[permanent dead link]
- ^ Oxley, James (2007), "The contributions of Dominic Welsh to matroid theory", in Grimmett, Geoffrey; McDiarmid, Colin (eds.), Combinatorics, Complexity, and Chance: A Tribute to Dominic Welsh (PDF), pp. 234–259, CiteSeerX 10.1.1.62.6989, doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198571278.003.0015, ISBN 9780198571278
- ^ Dominic J. A. Welsh at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ^ David R. Wood, The Academic Family Tree of Dominic Welsh (PDF)
- ^ Review of Complexity and Cryptography by J. Rothe (2007), SIGACT News 38 (2): 16–20, doi:10.1145/1272729.1272735.
- ^ "Oxford University Press webpage"