Jennifer Pagano

EDU Problem Solving and Assessment

Dr. Smith
March 24, 2015
Discrete Mathematician
Peter Ladislaw Hammer was a modern day discrete
mathematician. He was born into a Hungarian and Jewish family in
Timisoara, Romania on December 23, 1936. He earned his degree in
mathematics and his Ph.D. at the University of Bucharest. He then
married and he and his wife moved to Israel where he became a
professor. He then moved to Canada and became a professor at the
University of Montreal and at the University of Waterloo. Later, he
moved to the United States and taught at Rutgers University. Hammer
had a lot of major contributions to mathematics. At Rutgers, he
founded the Rutgers University Center for Operations Research. He
would launch a series of professional publications and events to get
young researchers involved in interacting with mathematical
researchers and research. It was then that he became the founder of
many professional journals that concerned Discrete Mathematics. He
ultimately published 19 books and over 240 papers. He received the
prize of the Romanian Academy of Science and joined the American
Association for the Advancement of Science.

Peter Hammer was known to be the personification of Discrete

Mathematics. Hammer was one of the most influential researchers of
Discrete Applied Mathematics. He made a major impact on several
areas including, binary optimization and algorithmic graph theory. He
also wrote a book about Boolean Methods which founded the new
concept of pseudo-Boolean optimization. A Boolean function has the
equation, : Bk B and a domain, B={0,1} which is called the Boolean
domain. This function describes how to find a Boolean value output
based on Boolean inputs. They help solve problems concerning
complexity theory and they also play a critical role in cryptography. He
also applied Boolean functions to graph theory, integer programming
and data analysis. His discoveries helped advance other fields of
mathematics and did not only touch upon Discrete Mathematics.
If I had to teach discrete mathematics to my students I would
first comment on how Hammer taught at Rutgers and did most of his
research there since I am from New Jersey. I would then explain to
them how the most fascinating aspect about Peter Hammer is how
modern of a mathematician he is. For being so modern, one would
think he would only touch upon certain aspects of mathematics.
Hammer created a new division of mathematics, Discrete Mathematics,
which all math majors now study. It is so interesting to note how some
major concepts in mathematics are still being discovered. Hammer
didnt only focus on Discrete Mathematics but he discovered a lot of

concepts to help improve multiple fields of mathematics. This also

helps show how all of mathematics is connected.

Works Cited
"Peter Ladislaw Hammer (1936 - 2006)." Peter Ladislaw Hammer (1936
- 2006).
Rutgers University, Web. 24 Mar. 2015.
<http://rutcor.rutgers.edu/peterhammer.html>.