Ingo Althöfer

Althöfer in 2008

Ingo Althöfer (born 1961)[1] is a German mathematician and former professor of operations research at the University of Jena.[2]

Althöfer earned his PhD in 1986 at Bielefeld University. His dissertation, Asymptotic Properties of Certain Competition Systems in Artificial Intelligence and Ecology, was supervised by Rudolf Ahlswede.[3]

Contributions

Topics in Althöfer's professional research include the realization of finite metric spaces by shortest path metrics in graphs and their approximation by greedy spanners,[4] algorithmic game theory and combinatorial game theory,[5] and heuristic search algorithms for optimization problems.

Althöfer is also known for his inventions of games and puzzles, including dice game EinStein würfelt nicht!,[6] for his experiments with self-assembly of Lego building blocks by running them through a washing machine,[7] and for his innovations in computer-human chess playing. In the 1990s he tested his "drei hirn" ["3-brains"] system, in which a human decides between the choices of two computer chess players, against strong human players including grandmaster David Bronstein and woman grandmaster Sofia Polgar.[8] In 2004 he and Timo Klaustermeyer introduced freestyle chess, a style of human chess playing allowing arbitrary consultation with computers or other people.[9]

Books

  • Menzer, Hartmut; Althöfer, Ingo (2014). Zahlentheorie und Zahlenspiele : Sieben ausgewählte Themenstellungen (in German). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-486-98963-2. OCLC 898769807.
  • Althöfer, Ingo; Voigt, Roland (2014). Spiele, Rätsel, Zahlen : faszinierendes zu Lasker-Mühle, Sudoku-Varianten, Havannah, EinStein würfelt nicht, Yavalath, 3-Hirn-Schach ... (in German). Heidelberg: Springer Spektrum. ISBN 978-3-642-55301-1. OCLC 894170235.

He has also self-published other books through his personal publishing company, 3-Hirn Verlag, and is one of the editors of the multi-volume book series Rudolf Ahlswede’s Lectures on Information Theory.

Selected Papers

Selected Board Games

References

  1. ^ Birth year from German National Library catalog entry, retrieved 2020-09-25
  2. ^ Chair Operations Research, University of Jena, retrieved 2020-09-25
  3. ^ Ingo Althöfer at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. ^ Ahmed, Reyan; Bodwin, Greg; Sahneh, Faryad Darabi; Hamm, Keaton; Jebelli, Mohammad Javad Latifi; Kobourov, Stephen; Spence, Richard (August 2020), "Graph spanners: A tutorial review", Computer Science Review, 37: 100253, arXiv:1909.03152, doi:10.1016/j.cosrev.2020.100253, S2CID 202539199
  5. ^ Fraenkel, Aviezri (August 2012), "Combinatorial Games: Selected Bibliography with a Succinct Gourmet Introduction", The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 1000, doi:10.37236/22
  6. ^ Bonnet, François; Viennot, Simon (2017), "Toward Solving "EinStein würfelt nicht!"", in Winands, Mark H.M.; van den Herik, H. Jaap; Kosters, Walter A. (eds.), Advances in Computer Games: 15th International Conferences, ACG 2017, Leiden, The Netherlands, July 3–5, 2017, Revised Selected Papers, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 10664, Springer, pp. 13–25, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-71649-7_2
  7. ^ Lossau, Norbert (25 September 2018), "Warum ein Mathematiker Legosteine in die Waschmaschine steckt" [Why a mathematician puts Lego blocks in the washing machine], Die Welt (in German)
  8. ^ "Drei Hirn (Althoefer)", ChessGames.com, retrieved 2020-09-25
  9. ^ Cook, Darren (2011), "A Human-Computer Team Experiment for 9x9 Go", in van den Herik, H. Jaap; Iida, Hiroyuki; Plaat, Aske (eds.), Computers and Games: 7th International Conference, CG 2010, Kanazawa, Japan, September 24-26, 2010, Revised Selected Papers, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6515, Springer, pp. 145–155, doi:10.1007/978-3-642-17928-0_14
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ingo Althöfer.