Citizenship Canadian Residence Canada | Name Ronald Read | |
Books An Atlas of Graphs, Tangrams: 330 Puzzles, A mathematical background for economists and social scientists Similar People Robin Wilson, George Polya, William Lawrence Kocay | ||
Notable students William Lawrence Kocay | ||
Ronald C. Read (Ron Read, born December 19, 1924) is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He has published many books and papers, primarily on enumeration of graphs, graph isomorphism, chromatic polynomials, and particularly, the use of computers in graph-theoretical research. A majority of his later work was done in Waterloo. Read received his Ph.D. (1959) in graph theory from the University of London.
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Life and career
Ronald Read served in the Royal Navy during World War II, then completed a degree in mathematics at the University of Cambridge before joining The University of the West Indies in Jamaica as the second founding member of the Mathematics Department there. In 1970 he moved his family to Canada to take up a post as Professor of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
While in Jamaica he became interested in cave exploration, and in 1957 he founded the Jamaica Caving Club.
He has had a lifelong interest in the making of string figures and is the inventor of the Olympic Flag String Figure on YouTube.
He is an accomplished musician and plays many instruments including violin, viola, cello, double bass, piano, guitar, lute, and many early music instruments, some of which he has also built. He has diplomas in Theory and in Composition from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada, and has composed four works for orchestra and several pieces for smaller groups.