Doron Zeilberger is an Israeli mathematician, known for his work in combinatorics

Combinatorics

Combinatorics is a branch of mathematics concerning the study of finite or countable discrete structures. Aspects of combinatorics include counting the structures of a given kind and size , deciding when certain criteria can be met, and constructing and analyzing objects meeting the criteria ,...

.

He is a Board of Governors Professor of Mathematics at Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

. He received his doctorate from the Weizmann Institute of Science

Weizmann Institute of Science

The Weizmann Institute of Science , known as Machon Weizmann, is a university and research institute in Rehovot, Israel. It differs from other Israeli universities in that it offers only graduate and post-graduate studies in the sciences....

 in 1976, under the direction of Harry Dym

Harry Dym

Professor Harry Dym is a mathematician at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Dym's research interests include operator theory, interpolation theory, and inverse problems.He is notable for discovering the Dym equation.-External links:...

.

Zeilberger has made numerous important contributions to combinatorics, hypergeometric identities, and q-series. Zeilberger gave the first proof of the alternating sign matrix conjecture, noteworthy not only for its mathematical content, but also for the fact that Zeilberger recruited nearly a hundred volunteer checkers to "pre-referee" the paper. Together with Herbert Wilf

Herbert Wilf

Herbert Saul Wilf is a mathematician, specializing in combinatorics and graph theory. He was the Thomas A. Scott Professor of Mathematics in Combinatorial Analysis and Computing at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written numerous books and research papers...

, Zeilberger was awarded the American Mathematical Society

American Mathematical Society

The American Mathematical Society is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, which it does with various publications and conferences as well as annual monetary awards and prizes to mathematicians.The society is one of the...

's Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contributions to Research in 1998 for their development of WZ theory, which has revolutionized the field of hypergeometric summation. In 2004, Zeilberger was awarded the Euler Medal

Euler Medal

The Euler Medal, named after the 18th century mathematician Leonhard Euler, is an honor awarded annually by the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications to a member with a distinguished lifetime contribution to combinatorial research who are still active in research.-Laureates:* 2008: Gabor...

; the citation refers to him as "a champion of using computers and algorithms to do mathematics quickly and efficiently." In 2011, together with Manuel Kauers and Christoph Koutschan, Zeilberger proved the q-TSPP conjecture, which was independently stated in 1983 by George Andrews and David P. Robbins

David P. Robbins

David P. Robbins was an American mathematician. He is most famous for introducing alternating sign matrices and his work on generalized Heron's formula....

 .

Zeilberger considers himself an ultrafinitist

Ultrafinitism

In the philosophy of mathematics, ultrafinitism, also known as ultraintuitionism, strict-finitism, actualism, and strong-finitism is a form of finitism. There are various philosophies of mathematics which are called ultrafinitism...

. He is also known for crediting his computer "Shalosh B. Ekhad" as a co-author ("Shalosh" and "Ekhad" mean "Three" and "One" in Hebrew respectively, referring to the AT&T

AT&T

AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

 3B1

3b1

The 3B1 was a Unix workstation computer originally developed by Convergent Technologies , and marketed by AT&T in the mid- to late-1980s...

 model), and for his provocative opinions, some of which are:

• "The Shocking State of Contemporary "Mathematics", and the Meta-Shocking Fact that Very Few People Are Shocked"
• "People who believe that applied math is bad math are bad mathematicians"
• "Guess what? Programming is even more fun than proving, and, more importantly it gives as much, if not more, insight and understanding"
• "Frank Quinn's rigor is not as rigorous as he thinks"
• "Still like that old-time blackboard talk".

External links

• Doron Zeilberger's homepage
• Biography from ScienceWorld
  ScienceWorld
  ScienceWorld, also known as Eric Weisstein's World of Science, is a Web site that opened to the general public in January 2002. As of November 2007, ScienceWorld includes more than 4,000 entries in fields of science including astronomy, chemistry, physics, as well as biographies of many scientists...
  
  
• From A = B to Z = 60, a conference in honor of Doron Zeilberger's 60th birthday, May 27 and 28, 2010