mathematics

Maria Chudnovsky

Maria Chudnovsky is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Maria Chudnovsky rather than just read about it. In short: Maria Chudnovsky (born January 6, 1977) is an Israeli-American mathematician working on graph theory and combinatorial optimization. She is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow.

Key takeaways

Maria Chudnovsky belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Maria Chudnovsky to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Maria Chudnovsky from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Maria Chudnovsky (born January 6, 1977) is an Israeli-American mathematician working on graph theory and combinatorial optimization. She is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow.

Education and career Chudnovsky is a professor in the department of mathematics at Princeton University. She grew up in Russia (attended Saint Petersburg Lyceum 30) and Israel, studying at the Technion, and received her Ph.D. in 2003 from Princeton University under the supervision of Paul Seymour. After postdoctoral research at the Clay Mathematics Institute, she became an assistant professor at Princeton University in 2005, and moved to Columbia University in 2006. By 2014, she was the Liu Family Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Columbia. She returned to Princeton as a professor of mathematics in 2015. Chudnovsky is an editor for a number of mathematical journals, including Combinatorica, Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series B, Journal of Graph Theory and Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society.

Research

Chudnovsky's contributions to graph theory include the proof of the strong perfect graph theorem (with Neil Robertson, Paul Seymour, and Robin Thomas) characterizing perfect graphs as being exactly the graphs with no odd induced cycles of length at least 5 or their complements. Other research contributions of Chudnovsky include co-authorship of the first polynomial-time algorithm for recognizing perfect graphs (time bounded by a polynomial of degree 9), a structural characterization of the claw-free graphs, and progress on the Erdős–Hajnal conjecture.

Selected publications Chudnovsky, Maria; Cornuéjols, Gérard; Liu, Xinming; Seymour, Paul; Vušković, Kristina (2005), "Recognizing Berge graphs", Combinatorica, 25 (2): 143–186, doi:10.1007/s00493-005-0012-8, MR 2127609, S2CID 2229369. Chudnovsky, Maria; Seymour, Paul (2005), "The structure of claw-free graphs", Surveys in Combinatorics 2005, London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series, vol. 327, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, pp. 153–171, CiteSeerX 10.1.1.112.4130, doi:10.1017/CBO9780511734885.008, ISBN 9780511734885, MR 2187738 {{citation}}: Cite uses deprecated parameter |citeseerx= (help). Chudnovsky, Maria; Robertson, Neil; Seymour, Paul; Thomas, Robin (2006), "The strong perfect graph theorem", Annals of Mathematics, 164 (1): 51–229, arXiv:math/0212070, doi:10.4007/annals.2006.164.51, S2CID 119151552. Chudnovsky, Maria; Sivaraman, Vaidy (2018), "Odd Holes in Bull-Free Graphs", SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics, 32 (2): 951–955, arXiv:1704.04262, doi:10.1137/17M1131301, MR 3794342, S2CID 1657094

Awards and honors In 2004 Chudnovsky was named one of the "Brilliant 10" by Popular Science magazine. Her work on the strong perfect graph theorem won for her and her co-authors the 2009 Fulkerson Prize. In 2012 she was awarded a "genius award" under the MacArthur Fellows Program. She was elected as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in the 2024 class of fellows. Elected to the National Academy of Science in 2026.

Personal life In 2011, she married Daniel Panner, a viola player who teaches at Mannes School of Music and Rutgers University. They have a son named Rafael.

References

External links Chudnovsky's home page at Princeton University

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Maria Chudnovsky

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Maria Chudnovsky claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Maria Chudnovsky before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Maria Chudnovsky ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Maria Chudnovsky

In research: Maria Chudnovsky appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Maria Chudnovsky in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Maria Chudnovsky is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1977 births, Columbia University faculty, Combinatorialists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Maria Chudnovsky outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Maria Chudnovsky in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Maria Chudnovsky means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Maria Chudnovsky out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Maria Chudnovsky in simple terms?

Maria Chudnovsky (born January 6, 1977) is an Israeli-American mathematician working on graph theory and combinatorial optimization. She is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow.

Why does Maria Chudnovsky matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Maria Chudnovsky?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Maria Chudnovsky.