Brendan McKay
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Brendan D. McKay (b. October 26, 1951 in Melbourne, Australia) is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at ANU (Australian National University). He has published extensively in combinatorics. One of his main contributions has been a practical algorithm for graph isomorphism and its software implementation NAUTY (No AUTomorphisms, Yes?). Further achievements include proving with Radziszowski that the Ramsey Number R(4,5)=25, proving with Radziszowski that no 4-(12,6,6) combinatorial designs exist, proving with Gunnar Brinkmann the number of posets on 16 points, and proving with Ian M. Wanless the number of latin squares of size 11.
Outside of this specialty, he is best known for his collaborative work with a group of Israeli mathematicians that criticizes the Bible code hypothesis by arguing that the patterns in the Bible that supposedly indicate some hidden message from a divine source or have predictive power can be just as easily found in other works, such as War and Peace. Their work is frequently used to challenge Drosnin's arguments about a special Biblical code.
His Erdős number is 1.
[edit] External links
- Home page at the Australian National University
- [1] Excerpt from a transcript of the debate between Michael Drosnin and Brendan McKay, in late October of 1997
