Jeff Westbrook

Jeff Westbrook is a TV writer best known for his work on The Simpsons and Futurama, for which he is a three-time winner of the WGA Award.

Prior to becoming a TV writer, Westbrook was a successful algorithms researcher. After majoring in physics and history of science at Harvard University, he studied computer science with Robert Tarjan at Princeton University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1989 with a thesis entitled Algorithms and Data Structures for Dynamic Graph Algorithms. He then took a faculty position at Yale University, later becoming a researcher for AT&T Laboratories before leaving research for Hollywood. Westbrook's Erdős number is three due to his research collaborations with Tarjan and others. His Bacon number is also three, due to his appearance as an extra in the movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, giving a combined Erdős–Bacon number of six.