Paul Seymour awarded an Honorary DMath Degree

Professor Paul Seymour received an honorary Doctor of Mathematics (DMath) at the University of Waterloo's Fall Convocation.

Paul is a mathematician whose research has had profound impact in mathematics and theoretical computer science. He is the world's leading expert in the area of structural combinatorics. He has the unique distinction of having been awarded the Fulkerson Prize on three occasions. He has also received several other prestigious awards, including the Polya Prize (twice) and the Ostrowski Prize.

His many remarkable research accomplishments include the decomposition of regular matroids, the proof of the Strong Perfect Graph Theorem, and a shorter, more robust, proof of the Four Colour Theorem. However his work on the Graph Minors Project, joint with Neil Robertson, is undoubtedly his crowning achievement. The theorem states that "in any infinite sequence of graphs, there are two graphs one containing the other as a minor".

Paul obtained his doctorate from Oxford University in 1975 and is now Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University. He has maintained close connections with the University of Waterloo having worked here, as a Visiting Research Associate, in 1978-79, and then holding an Adjunct Professorship here from 1988 to 1993.