Alan L. Selman
Alan L. Selman
Born(1941-04-02)April 2, 1941
New York City, NY
DiedJanuary 22, 2021(2021-01-22) (aged 79)
Medford, NJ
Alma materBS, City College of New York, 1962
MA, University of California, Berkeley, 1964
PhD, Pennsylvania State University, 1970
Known forStructural complexity theory
SpouseSharon Selman
AwardsACM Fellow
Fulbright Award
Humboldt Research Award
University at Buffalo Exceptional Scholar Award
SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Invitation Fellowship
ACM SIGACT Distinguished Service Prize
IEEE Computer Society Meritorious Service Award for founding the Symposium on Structure in Complexity
Scientific career
FieldsTheoretical computer science
Mathematics
ThesisArithmetical Reducibilities and Sets of Formulas Valid in Finite Structures (1970)
Doctoral advisorPaul Axt
Doctoral studentsJoachim Grollman
John Geske
Roy Rubinstein
Ashish Naik
A. Pavan
S. Sengupta
Liyu Zhang
Dung Nguyeen
Andrew Hughes
Mitsunori Ogihara (postdoctoral advisee)
Edith Hemaspaandra (postdoctoral advisee)
Christian Glasser (postdoctoral advisee)

Alan Louis Selman (April 2, 1941 – January 22, 2021)[1] was a mathematician and theoretical computer scientist known for his research on structural complexity theory, the study of computational complexity in terms of the relation between complexity classes rather than individual algorithmic problems.[2][3]

Education and career

Selman was a graduate of the City College of New York. He earned a master's degree at the University of California, Berkeley before completing his Ph.D. in 1970 at Pennsylvania State University.[4] His dissertation, Arithmetical Reducibilities and Sets of Formulas Valid in Finite Structures, was supervised by Paul Axt, a student of Stephen Cole Kleene.[5]

He became a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, and an assistant professor of mathematics at Florida State University, before moving to the computer science department of Iowa State University, eventually becoming a full professor there. In the late 1980s he moved to Northeastern University, becoming acting dean there, and in 1990 he moved again to the University at Buffalo as chair of computer science. He retired in 2014, and died on January 22, 2021.[4]

He was the first chair of the annual Computational Complexity Conference,[4] and served as editor-in-chief of the journal Theory of Computing Systems for 18 years,[6] beginning in 2001.[3]

Selected publications

Selman's research publications included well-cited works on the classification of different types of reductions according to their computational power, the formulation of promise problems, the complexity class UP of problems solvable by unambiguous Turing machines, and their applications to the computational complexity of cryptography:[2][3]

  • Ladner, R. E.; Lynch, N. A.; Selman, A. L. (1975), "A comparison of polynomial time reducibilities", Theoretical Computer Science, 1 (2): 103–123, doi:10.1016/0304-3975(75)90016-X, MR 0395319
  • Even, Shimon; Selman, Alan L.; Yacobi, Yacov (1984), "The complexity of promise problems with applications to public-key cryptography", Information and Control, 61 (2): 159–173, doi:10.1016/S0019-9958(84)80056-X, MR 0772678
  • Grollmann, Joachim; Selman, Alan L. (1988), "Complexity measures for public-key cryptosystems", SIAM Journal on Computing, 17 (2): 309–335, doi:10.1137/0217018, MR 0935342

As well as being the editor of several edited volumes, Selman was the coauthor of the textbook Computability and Complexity Theory (with Steve Homer, Springer, 2001; 2nd ed., 2011).[7]

Recognition

Selman was a Fulbright Scholar and Humboldt Fellow.[4] He was named an ACM Fellow in 1998, as "an influential contributor to computational complexity theory and a dedicated professional within the academic computer science community".[8] In 2002, ACM SIGACT (the Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory of the Association for Computing Machinery) gave him their Distinguished Service Prize, noting his work in helping to found the Computational Complexity Conference and in helping to fund theoretical computer science research through his work drafting policy reports for the National Science Foundation.[9]

The journal Theory of Computing Systems is organizing a commemorative issue celebrating his memory.[6]

References

  1. ↑ Selman, Sharon, In memoriam, University at Buffalo, retrieved 2021-08-06
  2. 1 2 Fenner, Stephen (March 2021), "Remembrances of Alan", ACM SIGACT News, 52 (1): 87–93, doi:10.1145/3457588.3457603, S2CID 232245680
  3. 1 2 3 Hemaspaandra, Lane A. (September 2014), "Beautiful structures: An appreciation of the contributions of Alan Selman", ACM SIGACT News, 45 (3): 54–70, doi:10.1145/2670418.2670436, S2CID 1948170
  4. 1 2 3 4 Dr. Alan L. Selman 1941-2021, Iowa State University Department of Computer Science, February 12, 2021, retrieved 2021-08-06
  5. ↑ Alan Selman at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  6. 1 2 "Commemorative Issue for Alan L. Selman", Journal updates: Theory of Computing Systems, Springer, retrieved 2021-08-06
  7. ↑ Reviews of Computability and Complexity Theory:
  8. ↑ "Alan Selman", ACM Fellows, Association for Computing Machinery, retrieved 2021-08-06
  9. ↑ 2002 ACM-SIGACT Distinguished Service Prize: Alan Selman, ACM SIGACT, retrieved 2021-08-06
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