Louis Kauffman

Louis Hirsch Kauffman (born February 3, 1945) is an American mathematician, topologist, and professor of Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is known for the introduction and development of the bracket polynomial and the Kauffman polynomial.

Kauffman was of his graduating class at Norwood Norfolk Central High School in 1962. He received his B.S. at MIT in 1966 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1972 (with the famous mathematician William Browder as thesis advisor).

Kauffman has worked at many places as a visiting professor and researcher, including the University of Zaragoza in Spain, the University of Iowa in Iowa City, the Institute Hautes Etudes Scientifiques in Bures Sur Yevette, France, the Institute Henri Poincaré in Paris, France, the Università di Bologna, Italy, the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil, and the Newton Institute in Cambridge England.

He is the founding editor and one of the managing editors of the Journal of Knot Theory and Its Ramifications, and editor of the World Scientific Book Series On Knots and Everything. He writes a column entitled Virtual Logic for the journal Cybernetics and Human Knowing

From 2005 to 2008 he was president of the American Society for Cybernetics. He plays clarinet in the ChickenFat Klezmer Orchestra in Chicago.

Kauffman's research interests are in the fields of cybernetics, topology and foundations of mathematics and physics. His work is primarily in the topics of knot theory and connections with statistical mechanics, quantum theory, algebra, combinatorics and foundations. In topology he introduced and developed the bracket polynomial and Kauffman polynomial.

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