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Yousef Alavi (March 19, 1928 – May 21, 2013)[1] was an Iranian born American mathematician who specialized in combinatorics and graph theory. He received his PhD from Michigan State University in 1958.[2] He was a professor of mathematics at Western Michigan University from 1958 until his retirement in 1996;[3] he chaired the department from 1989 to 1992.[4]
Alavi was known for complaining that "this is highly irregular!" He was also a frequent host for Paul Erdős on his visits to Western Michigan. On one of these visits, these two things came together: he made his usual complaint at a time when Erdős and Ronald Graham were present. This sparked a discussion on what it might mean for a graph to be highly irregular, kicking off a line of joint research on highly irregular graphs through which Alavi obtained Erdős number one.[5]
In 1987 he received the first Distinguished Service Award of the Michigan Section of the Mathematical Association of America due to his 30 years of service to the MAA; at that time, the Michigan House and Senate issued a special resolution honoring him.[6]
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