Frank Harary

Frank Harary (March 11, 1921 – January 4, 2005) was an American mathematician, who specialized in graph theory. He was widely recognized as one of the "fathers" of modern graph theory. Harary was a master of clear exposition and, together with his many doctoral students, he standardized the terminology of graphs. He broadened the reach of this field to include physics, psychology, sociology, and even anthropology. Gifted with a keen sense of humor, Harary challenged and entertained audiences at all levels of mathematical sophistication. A particular trick he employed was to turn theorems into games - for instance, students would try to add red edges to a graph on six vertices in order to create a red triangle, while another group of students tried to add edges to create a blue triangle (and each edge of the graph had to be either blue or red). Because of the theorem on friends and strangers, one team or the other would have to win.

Frank Harary was born in New York City, the oldest child to a family of Jewish immigrants from Syria and Morocco. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Brooklyn College in 1941 and 1945 respectively and his Ph.D., with supervisor Alfred L. Foster, from University of California at Berkeley in 1948.

Prior to his teaching career he became a research assistant in the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan.

Harary's first publication, "Atomic Boolean-like rings with finite radical", went through much effort to be put into the Duke Mathematical Journal in 1950. This article was first submitted to the American Mathematical Society in November 1948, then sent to the Duke Mathematical Journal where it was revised three times before it was finally published two years after its initial submission. Harary began his teaching career at the University of Michigan in 1953 where he was first an assistant professor, then in 1959 associate professor and in 1964 was appointed as a professor of mathematics, a position he held until 1986.

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