Gaston Tarry

Gaston Tarry

Gaston Tarry (27 September 1843 – 21 June 1913) was a French mathematician. Born in Villefranche de Rouergue, Aveyron, he studied mathematics at high school before joining the civil service in Algeria. He pursued mathematics as an amateur.

Contributions

In 1895 Tarry published a systematic algorithm for traversing a maze without prior knowledge of its layout; this method is now recognized in graph theory as one of the earliest variants of a depth-first search (DFS) algorithm.

Tarry also made contributions to number theory and combinatorics, including work on the Prouhet–Tarry–Escott problem.

In 1900 Tarry confirmed Leonhard Euler's conjecture that no 6×6 Graeco-Latin square was possible (the 36 officers problem).

Publications

See also

References

  1. ↑ Tarry, Gaston (1895). "Le problème des labyrinthes". Nouvelles Annales de Mathématiques. Série 3. 14: 187–190.
  2. ↑ Even, Shimon (2011). Graph Algorithms (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 46–48. ISBN 978-0-521-73653-4.
  3. ↑ Tarry, Gaston (1898). "Question 1401". L'Intermédiaire des Mathématiciens. 5: 266–267.
  4. ↑ "From Latin Squares to Sudoku: A History of Magic Numbers". Archived from the original on 2008-10-01.
  5. ↑ "36 Officer Problem". Archived from the original on 2008-08-28.
  6. ↑ Tarry, Gaston (1900). "Le problème des 36 officiers". Comptes rendus de l'Association française pour l'avancement des sciences. 29 (1): 122–123.
  7. ↑ Tarry, Gaston (1901). "Le problème des 36 officiers". Comptes rendus de l'Association française pour l'avancement des sciences. 29 (2): 170–203.