Jeffrey Shallit
Jeffrey Shallit | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 17, 1957 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Mathematician, computer scientist, professor |
| Years active | –present |
| Known for | Opposition to intelligent design, research in number theory and formal languages |
| Notable work | Algorithmic Number Theory, Automatic Sequences: Theory, Applications, Generalizations, A Second Course in Formal Languages and Automata Theory |
Jeffrey Outlaw Shallit (born October 17, 1957) is a mathematician and computer scientist from the United States, with a specialization in number theory. He is also recognized for his opposition to intelligent design. He is married to fellow computer scientist Anna Lubiw.
Early life and education
Shallit was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to journalist Joseph Shallit and author Louise Lee Outlaw Shallit. He has a sibling, Jonathan Shallit, who is a professor of music.
He completed his undergraduate studies in mathematics at Princeton University in 1979 and obtained his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley in 1983. His Ph.D. dissertation, titled Metric Theory of Pierce Expansions, was conducted under the supervision of Manuel Blum.
Advocacy
Since 1996, Shallit has held the position of Vice-President at Electronic Frontier Canada.
In 1997, he made available online Holocaust Revised: Lies of Our Times, an update to a 1993 article that identified several individuals he considered Holocaust deniers, such as David Irving, Fred A. Leuchter, and Eustace Mullins. This publication sparked a public debate with Irving.
Shallit has been an outspoken critic of intelligent design advocate William Dembski. Together with Wesley Elsberry, he co-wrote a paper exposing errors in Dembski's mathematical reasoning. He was scheduled to provide testimony opposing Dembski during the Kitzmiller v. Dover case before Dembski withdrew.
Professional life
As of 2024, Shallit serves as a Professor within the School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo and acts as editor-in-chief for the Journal of Integer Sequences. His research interests encompass combinatorics on words, formal languages, automata theory, and algorithmic number theory. In 2008, he received recognition as a Distinguished Scientist by the Association for Computing Machinery.
Among his significant works are Algorithmic Number Theory (co-authored with Eric Bach), an authoritative resource on algorithms, Automatic Sequences: Theory, Applications, Generalizations (with Jean-Paul Allouche), and A Second Course in Formal Languages and Automata Theory.
See also
External links
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- 1957 births
- Living people
- Academic staff of the University of Waterloo
- American computer scientists
- American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent
- American critics of creationism
- IBM employees
- I. P. Sharp Associates employees
- Mathematicians from Philadelphia
- American number theorists
- Princeton University alumni
- Scientists from Philadelphia