Neil Sloane Explained

Neil Sloane
Birth Date:	10 October 1939
Birth Place:	Beaumaris, Wales^[1]
Workplaces:	Cornell University AT&T Bell Laboratories AT&T Labs
Alma Mater:	University of Melbourne Cornell University
Doctoral Advisor:	Frederick Jelinek, Wolfgang Fuchs
Known For:	Sphere Packing, Lattices and Groups (with J. H. Conway), The Theory of Error-Correcting Codes (with F. J. MacWilliams), and the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
Awards:	Chauvenet Prize (1979) Claude E. Shannon Award IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal (2005)

Neil James Alexander Sloane FLSW (born October 10, 1939) is a British-American mathematician.^[2] His major contributions are in the fields of combinatorics, error-correcting codes, and sphere packing. Sloane is best known for being the creator and maintainer of the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS).^[3]

Biography

Sloane was born in Beaumaris, Anglesey, Wales, in 1939, moving to Cowes, Isle of Wight, England in 1946. The family emigrated to Australia, arriving at the start of 1949. Sloane then moved from Melbourne to the United States in 1961.

He studied at Cornell University under Nick DeClaris, Frank Rosenblatt, Frederick Jelinek and Wolfgang Heinrich Johannes Fuchs, receiving his Ph.D. in 1967. His doctoral dissertation was titled Lengths of Cycle Times in Random Neural Networks. Sloane joined AT&T Bell Labs in 1968 and retired from AT&T Labs in 2012. He became an AT&T Fellow in 1998. He is also a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales,^[4] an IEEE Fellow, a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society,^[5] and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

He is a winner of a Lester R. Ford Award in 1978^[6] and the Chauvenet Prize in 1979.^[6] In 1998 he was an Invited Speaker of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin.^[7] In 2005 Sloane received the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal.^[8] In 2008 he received the Mathematical Association of America David P. Robbins Prize, and in 2013 the George Pólya Award.

In 2014, to celebrate his 75th birthday, Sloane shared some of his favorite integer sequences.^[9] Besides mathematics, he loves rock climbing and has authored two rock-climbing guides to New Jersey.^[10]

He regularly appears in videos for Brady Haran's YouTube channel Numberphile.^[11]

Selected publications

• Neil James Alexander Sloane, A Handbook of Integer Sequences, Academic Press, NY, 1973.
• Florence Jessie MacWilliams and Neil James Alexander Sloane, The Theory of Error-Correcting Codes, Elsevier/North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1977.^{[12] [13]}
• M. Harwit and Neil James Alexander Sloane, Hadamard Transform Optics, Academic Press, San Diego CA, 1979.
• Neil James Alexander Sloane and A. D. Wyner, editors, Claude Elwood Shannon: Collected Papers, IEEE Press, NY, 1993.
• Neil James Alexander Sloane and S. Plouffe, The Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, Academic Press, San Diego, 1995.
• J. H. Conway and Neil James Alexander Sloane, Sphere Packings, Lattices and Groups, Springer-Verlag, NY, 1st edn., 1988;^[14] 2nd edn., 1993;^[15] 3rd ed., 1998.
• A. S. Hedayat, Neil James Alexander Sloane and J. Stufken, Orthogonal Arrays: Theory and Applications, Springer-Verlag, NY, 1999.
• G. Nebe, E. M. Rains and Neil James Alexander Sloane, Self-Dual Codes and Invariant Theory, Springer-Verlag, 2006.

See also

• Reeds–Sloane algorithm
• Sloane's gap

External links

• • IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal Recipients, 2005 – Neil J. A. Sloane
• Neil Sloane's entry in the Numericana Hall of Fame
• "The pattern collector", Science News
• Doron Zeilberger, Opinion 124: A Database is Worth a Thousand Mathematical Articles
• Confessions of a Sequence Addict: Neil Sloane

Notes and References

1. Roselle . David P. . David Roselle . 1979 . Award of the Chauvenet Prize to Dr. Neil J. A. Sloane . American Mathematical Monthly . 86 . 2 . 79 . 10.2307/2321940. 2321940 .
2. Sloane's home page Web site: Neil J. A. Sloane: Home Page . June 2, 2012.
3. Contains information on over three hundred thousand integer sequences Web site: The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences . 10 October 2019.
4. Web site: Dr Neil Sloane . . Fellows . 2015 . 2017-10-16.
5. http://www.ams.org/profession/fellows-list List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
6. Sloane, Neil J. A.. Error correcting codes and invariant theory: new applications of a 19th century technique. Amer. Math. Monthly. 84. 2. 1977. 82–107. 10.2307/2319929. 2319929.
7. Book: Sloane, N. J. A.. The sphere packing problem. Doc. Math. (Bielefeld) Extra Vol. ICM Berlin, 1998, vol. III. 1998. 387–396. https://www.elibm.org/ft/10011595000.
8. Web site: IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal Recipients . https://web.archive.org/web/20100620000223/http://ieee.org/documents/hamming_rl.pdf . dead . June 20, 2010 . . May 29, 2011.
9. Web site: Bellos. Alex. Neil Sloane: the man who loved integer sequences. The Guardian. 10 December 2016. 7 October 2014.
10. Sloane's webpage for the book Web site: Rock Climbing New Jersey. 6 December 2012.
11. News: Sloan . Neil . Haran . Brady . Neil Sloane on Numberphile . 16 May 2019 . YouTube.
12. Book: The Theory of Error-Correcting Codes . Florence Jessiem . MacWilliams . Florence Jessiem MacWilliams . Neil James Alexander . Sloane . Neil James Alexander Sloane . . North-Holland Mathematical Library . 16 . 76-41296 . 978-0-444-85193-2 . digital print of 12th impression, 1st . 2007 . 1977 . Amsterdam / London / New York / Tokyo . AT&T Shannon Labs, Florham Park, New Jersey, USA. (xxii+762+6 pages)
13. Pless, Vera. Vera Pless. Review: The theory of error-correcting codes, I and II, by F. J. MacWilliams and N. J. A. Sloane. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc.. 1978. 84. 6. 1356–1359. 10.1090/s0002-9904-1978-14578-9. free.
14. Guy . Richard K.. Richard K. Guy. Review: Sphere packings, lattices and groups, by J. H. Conway and N. J. A. Sloane. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.). 1989. 21. 1. 142–147. 10.1090/s0273-0979-1989-15795-9. free.
15. Rogers . C. A.. Claude Ambrose Rogers. Review: Sphere packings, lattices and groups, second ed., by J. H. Conway and N. J. A. Sloane. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.). 1993. 29. 2. 306–314. 10.1090/s0273-0979-1993-00435-x. free.