Daniel Kleitman
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Daniel J. Kleitman is a professor of applied mathematics at MIT. His research interests include combinatorics, graph theory, Genomics, and operations research.
[edit] Biography
Kleitman received his PhD in Physics from Harvard University in 1958 under Julian Schwinger and Roy Glauber.[1]
Kleitman wrote papers with Paul Erdős, giving him an Erdős number of 1. He was a math advisor and extra in Good Will Hunting.[2]
Since Minnie Driver appeared in Good Will Hunting and in Sleepers with Kevin Bacon, Kleitman has a Bacon number of 2 and an Erdős–Bacon number of 3, the lowest currently known.[3] It is likely to remain so: to get an Erdős-Bacon number of 2, either a mathematician with an Erdős number of 1 would have to appear in a movie with Kevin Bacon himself, or stock footage of the late Paul Erdős (whose Erdős number is 0) would have to appear in a movie with an actor with a Bacon number of 1 (or Bacon himself), or a paper would have to be published which has been coauthored by Bacon and someone with an Erdős number of 1 (or Erdős himself).
[edit] References
- ^ Daniel Kleitman at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ^ Daniel J. Kleitman, "My Career in the Movies,", Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 45, 502 (April 1998)
- ^ Grossman, Jerry. "Items of Interest Related to Erdös Numbers". The Erdös Number Project. Oakland University. http://www4.oakland.edu/?id=9575&sid=243. Retrieved on 13 May 2009.
