Pearls of Computation: Christian Konrad about Philippe Flajolet
Friday, 23 January:
Pearls of Computation seminar
DATE AND TIME: Friday, 23 January 2015, at 2pm
PLACE: M1.04
Title: Philippe Flajolet: Does research. Smokes. Battles administration.
Speaker: Christian Konrad (Reykjavik University)
Abstract:
Philippe Flajolet suddenly passed away on March, 22nd 2011 and left a huge legacy behind. Besides being an exceptional researcher who profoundly shaped the area of analytic combinatorics, Philippe Flajolet was described by his colleagues as infinitely good hearted, generous, funny, radical, unconventional, and simply wonderful. In this talk, we will explore the life of this exceptional man and learn about his most significant scientific contributions. Among other things, we will learn how to estimate the number of different words in the totality of Shakespeare's works using a memory of only 128 bytes and reading through the works only once.
