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Peter Mann Winkler is a research mathematician, author of more than 125 research papers in mathematics[1] and patent holder in a broad range of applications, ranging from cryptography to marine navigation.[2] His research areas include discrete mathematics, theory of computation and probability theory. He is currently a professor of mathematics and computer science at Dartmouth College.[3]
Peter Winkler studied mathematics at Harvard University and later received his PhD in 1975 from Yale University under the supervision of Angus McIntyre.[4] He has also served as an assistant professor at Stanford, full professor and chair at Emory and as a mathematics research director at Bell Labs and Lucent Technologies.[2] He was visiting professor at the Technische Universität Darmstadt.[5]
He has published three books on mathematical puzzles: Mathematical Puzzles: A connoisseur's collection (A K Peters, 2004, ISBN 978-1-56881-201-4, translated to German and Russian), Mathematical Mind-Benders (A K Peters, 2007, ISBN 978-1-56881-336-3), and Mathematical Puzzles (A K Peters, 2021, ISBN 978-0-36720-693-2). And he is widely considered to be a pre eminent scholar in this domain. He was the Visiting Distinguished Chair for Public Dissemination of Mathematics at the National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath), gave topical talks at the Gathering 4 Gardner conferences, and wrote novel papers related to some of these puzzles.
Winkler's book Bridge at the Enigma Club[6] was a runner up for the 2011 Master Point Press Book Of The Year award.[7]
Also in 2011, Winkler received the David P. Robbins Prize of the Mathematical Association of America as coauthor of one of two papers[8] in the American Mathematical Monthly.
According to a story included in Chapter One of "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers / The Story of Paul Erdös and the Search for Mathematical Truth",[9] Paul Erdős attended the bar mitzvah celebration for Peter Winkler's twins, and Winkler's mother-in-law tried to throw Erdős out. [Quote:]
"Erdös came to my twins' bar mitzvah, notebook in hand," said Peter Winkler, a colleague of Graham's at AT&T. "He also brought gifts for my children--he loved kids--and behaved himself very well. But my mother-in-law tried to throw him out. She thought he was some guy who wandered in off the street, in a rumpled suit, carrying a pad under his arm. It is entirely possible that he proved a theorem or two during the ceremony."[9]
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