Herbert Wilf: 13 June 1931 – 7 January 2012

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Brent

I was sad to learn that Herbert Wilf died yesterday. Long-time readers of this blog may remember him as one of the discoverers of the Calkin-Wilf tree, which I wrote about in a ten-part series of posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

The Calkin-Wilf Tree

The Calkin-Wilf Tree

He also wrote generatingfunctionology, a textbook about generating functions, a topic near and dear to my heart (which I hope to write about here someday).

Although he was an emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania (where I am currently doing my PhD) I sadly never got a chance to meet him.

About Brent

Associate Professor of Computer Science at Hendrix College. Functional programmer, mathematician, teacher, pianist, follower of Jesus.
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1 Response to Herbert Wilf: 13 June 1931 – 7 January 2012

  1. PaulyG says:
    January 10, 2012 at 10:31 am

    He was my professor for calculus 240 and 241 back in 1979-1980. One of my favorite teachers at Penn. I have fond memories of his lectures.

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