[FOM] 827: Tangible Incompleteness Restarted/1

[Lawrence Paulson]

A small anecdote from my time at Caltech, when I attended a course on Combinatorial Mathematics taught by Herbert Ryser. As I recall, he stated that the main outlet in his field was the Journal of Combinatorial Theory. But at some point the editors came to feel that “real” combinatorics (Latin squares, block designs, etc.) was being pushed out by graph theory, so they divided the journal into Series A and Series B. Any paper with even a hint of graph theory would be banished to Series B. I can’t confirm that he used that exact language, but that’s the impression I came away with.

Larry Paulson


> On 27 Sep 2019, at 12:27, Rempe-Gillen, Lasse <L.Rempe at liverpool.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> Speaking as a mathematician not working in discrete mathematics or foundations, I can only say that I hold graph theory in very high esteem, and certainly consider it (or, at least, aspects of it) very much part of mathematics. I believe that the majority of my colleagues would feel the same – including Fields Medalists.
>