Ingo Wegener

Ingo Wegener (December 4, 1950 in Bremen – November 26, 2008 in Bielefeld) was an influential German computer scientist working in the field of theoretical computer science.[1][2][3][4]

Education and career

Wegener was educated at the Bielefeld University. He earned a diploma in mathematics there in 1976, a doctorate in 1978, and a habilitation in 1981.[1] His doctoral dissertation, Boolesche Funktionen, deren monotone Komplexität fast quadratisch ist, was jointly supervised by Wolfgang Paul [de] and Rudolf Ahlswede.[5]

He was a computer science professor at Goethe University Frankfurt from 1980 until 1987, when he moved to the Technical University of Dortmund. He remained at Dortmund until his death.[1]

Contributions

Wegener's dissertation research concerned circuit complexity, and he was known for his research on Boolean functions and binary decision diagrams.[1][2] He wrote two books on related topics, The Complexity of Boolean Functions (Wiley, 1987, also called "the blue book")[6] and Branching Programs and Binary Decision Diagrams: Theory and Applications (SIAM Press, 2000).[7]

Beginning in the 1990s, his research interests shifted towards the theoretical analysis of metaheuristics and evolutionary computation.[1][2]

Awards and honors

Wegener was elected as a fellow of the German society for computer science, the Gesellschaft für Informatik, in 2004.[8] For his merits on teaching and research in the field of theoretical computer science, he earned in 2006 the Konrad Zuse Medal from the Gesellschaft für Informatik.[1]

References

1. In memoriam of Prof. Dr. Ingo Wegener, 1950—2008, European Association for Theoretical Computer Science
2. Fortnow, Lance (December 9, 2008), "Ingo Wegener (1950-2008)", Computational Complexity
3. Jansen, Thomas; Schmidt, Melanie; Sudholt, Dirk; Witt, Carsten; Zarges, Christine (March 2009), "Ingo Wegener", In Memoriam, Evolutionary Computation, 17 (1): 1–2, doi:10.1162/evco.2009.17.1.1, S2CID 207686101
4. Doerr, Benjamin; Neumann, Frank (November 2009), "In Memoriam: Ingo Wegener", Algorithmica, 58 (3): 541–542, doi:10.1007/s00453-009-9372-6
5. Ingo Wegener at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
6. Review of The Complexity of Boolean Functions:
   • Hromkovič, Juraj (1989), Mathematical Reviews, MR 0905473
7. Reviews of Branching Programs and Binary Decision Diagrams:
   • Meinel, Christoph (2001), Mathematical Reviews, doi:10.1137/1.9780898719789, ISBN 978-0-89871-458-6, MR 1775233
   • Fortnow, Lance (June 2002), SIAM Review, 44 (2): 284–285, JSTOR 4148360
   • Johnson, Samuel (September 2010), ACM SIGACT News, 41 (3), Association for Computing Machinery: 36, doi:10.1145/1855118.1855126, S2CID 14574179
8. GI-Fellow citation, retrieved 2012-03-09.