Gian-Carlo Rota (1932-1999)
Across
- 3. University where Rota received a masters’ degree in 1954 and a Ph.D. in 1956, both in Mathematics
- 6. An award Rota won in 1996 that honored his work as an innovator and theorist responsible for popularizing the field of combinatorics
- 8. A paper Rota wrote that was pivotal in making combinatorics become a respected field and incorporating it into mainstream mathematics
- 10. Rota helped discover the modern theory of this field of Mathematics that uses polynomials to count combinatorial objects
- 11. Rota is said to have turned this field of mathematics into a mainstream and popular field today, and it is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting and certain properties of finite structures
- 12. Rota’s family had to flee to this country in 1946 to escape Mussolini’s fascist regime and death squads, which allowed him to continue his studies and become fluent in several languages
- 14. A field of mathematics that Rota researched that is concerned with properties of mathematical objects, especially polynomials, that are preserved by certain transformations.
- 16. Rota was passionate about and taught this field of philosophy, which studies the structures of experience and consciousness.
- 17. The last book Rota published before his death that discusses topics ranging from mathematics and philosophy to personal stories centering on the lives of mathematicians he had known.
- 18. Honors Rota held that were given to him by four universities: University of Strasbourg, University L’Aquila, University of Bologna, and Brooklyn Polytechnical University
- 19. An award Rota won in 1988 from the American Mathematical Society that praised his contribution to the field of combinatorics
- 20. An award Rota won from the National Security Agency in 1992 to recognize his accomplishments as an educator
Down
- 1. Viewed as his greatest editorial achievement, Rota became editor of this mathematical journal in 1961, and it was lauded as one of the most interesting and prestigious math journals ever
- 2. A type of associative algebra and one of his earliest discoveries; Rota built off of the work of Glen E. Baxter and found that one can prove identities in probability, q-series, and other areas by proving one overarching identity involving symmetric functions
- 4. City in Italy where Rota was born in 1932
- 5. In 1998, Rota was invited to present here by the American Mathematical Society, at a series of three lectures of increasing complexity presented each year by one of the world's most popular mathematicians
- 7. Spent most of his career working at this school (its abbreviation), where he worked in combinatorics, functional analysis, probability theory, and phenomenology
- 9. City in Massachusetts where Rota died in 1999
- 13. Father of Rota who was a civil engineer, architect, and prominent anti-facist
- 15. A field of mathematics that Rota researched during his masters and doctoral studies that focused on the study of vector spaces and linear functions defined on these spaces
- 16. Primary career Rota had throughout his life