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Dr. Robert E. Tarjan |
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Links: Overview of Hopcroft-Tarjan Algorithm Other Files (PDF): Expository Article on the Hopcroft-Tarjan Planarity Algorithm
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 Robert
Endre Tarjan received his undergraduate Bachelor of Science degree in
Mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
California in 1969. He then move to Stanford University in
Stanford, California where he received his M.S. in Computer Science in
1971 and his Ph. D. in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics in
1972, with his thesis titled: An Efficient Planarity Algorithm (incidentally,
his thesis advisor was Robert W. Floyd, winner of the 1978 Turing
Award). Tarjan next went to Cornell, California, and then Stanford
where he taught as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science. In
1980 he began a ten year run at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray
Hill, New Jersey. After this he returned to teaching, first at New
York University, then to Princeton, where he currently resides.
Tarjan is also a fellow with the NEC Research Institute in Princeton,
New Jersey and stands as InterTrust's Chief Scientist and a Senior
Research Fellow in InterTrust's Strategic Technologies and Architectural
Research laboratory (STAR Lab). The STAR Lab is a project created
by InterTrust technologies, a
digital rights management company. Tarjan has received multiple
honors and distinctions, has been published numerous times in popular
journals, and is widely recognized around the world in the field of
computer science.Tarjan himself was made famous with his 1972 paper Depth-First Search and Linear Graph Algorithms. According to one author the ideas and themes presented in this paper have contributed to work with database software, circuit modeling, error spread analysis in power network and many other practical applications. His work with John Hopcroft (co-author of our textbook) and Planarity Algorithms made both popular in 1974 we they released their paper and then again in 1986 when they were awarded the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery for their work with data structures and algorithms. Since then, Hopcroft and Tarjan have been leading the way in efficient design of algorithms and data structures for many different applications. Their Planarity Algorithm allowed one to determine if a graph was planar (i.e. "no crossings") in linear running time. Graphs are a mathematicians way to represent relationships, whether it be between computers on a network or airline flight maps. Tarjan and Hopcroft's development later allowed for others to design algorithms to minimize graphs. I personally don't understand their algorithm, but I'm sure the two links on the left side of this page might help someone understand them. |
| Author: Thaxton Mauzy (mauzyj@wlu.edu) All information for this page was taken from the sources listed above. |
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