Frank Harary 1921-2005
Dr. Frank Harary was born on March 11, 1921 in New York City. He obtained
his Bachelors and Masters degrees from Brooklyn College in 1941 and 1945
respectively and his doctorate from University of California at Berkeley
in 1948. He held a faculty position in Mathematics at University of Michigan
from
1948-1986 where he was also a member of Institute of Social Research from
1950-1982.
He was a Distinguished Professor (and later Distinguished Professor Emeritus)
in the
Computer Science Department at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces
from 1987 until the time he passed away.
Dr. Harary was widely recognized as one of the pioneers of modern
graph theory, a discipline of mathematics he helped found, popularize and
revitalize. An author of numerous books and articles, his book ``Graph Theory''
published in 1969,
is a modern classic that helped define, develop, direct and shape
the field of modern graph theory. It is one of the most cited and influential
scholarly
works in modern scientific literature. Dr. Harary taught what were the first
graph theory and combinatorial theory courses ever in 1955 at University of
Michigan.
He was also the founder
of Journals of Combinatorial Theory and Journal of Graph Theory and served on
the editorial
boards of many more. During his long and productive career,
Dr. Harary authored/coauthored more than 700 scholarly papers in areas as
diverse
as Anthropology, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Geography, Linguistics,
Music,
Physics, Political Science, Psychology, Social Science and of course
Mathematics which
brought forth the usefulness of Graph Theory in scientific thought. Dr. Harary
guided
16 Ph.D.students many of whom have gone on to be distinguished scholars
themselves. Dr.
Harary was a recipient of many national and international honors including the
Distinguished Alumnus
and Lifetime Achievement awards from Brooklyn College
and honorary degrees from
University of Aberdeen, Scotland (D.Sc. in Mathematics),
University of Lund, Sweden (Fil. Dr. in Social Sciences),
University of Exeter, UK (D.Sc. in Computer Science),
University of Macedonia, Thessaliniki, Greece (Dr. of Economics and Social Sciences) and
University of Louisville (Ph.D. in Mathematics).
Dr. Harary was also a fellow at Oxford (Wolfson College 1973-74)) and
Cambridge (Churchill College 1980-81)
Universities and an honorary
fellow of Indian National Academy of Sciences and Vice-President of the
Calcutta Mathematical
Society. Dr. Harary loved to travel all over the globe to spread the gospel of
graph theory - he delivered over a thousand conference and invited lectures in
more
than 87 countries in four different languages. Dr. Harary was a true scholar
with a
genuine love for graph theory which was an endless source of new discoveries,
beauty,
curiosity, surprises and joy for him till the very end of his life.
For his numerous contributions to the field, Dr. Harary was fondly referred to
as
``Mr. Graph Theory'' by his colleagues, peers and students. He will be greatly
missed.
Desh Ranjan
Professor and Department Head
Department of Computer Science
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico 88003
USA