astronomy

Ronald C. Read

Ronald C. Read is a astronomy 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 Ronald C. Read rather than just read about it. In short: Ronald Cedric Read (19 December 1924 – 7 January 2019) was a British mathematician, latterly a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He published many books and papers, primarily on enumeration of graphs, graph isomorphism, chromatic polynomials, and particularly, the use of computers in graph-theoretical research.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Ronald Cedric Read (19 December 1924 – 7 January 2019) was a British mathematician, latterly a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He published many books and papers, primarily on enumeration of graphs, graph isomorphism, chromatic polynomials, and particularly, the use of computers in graph-theoretical research. Read's conjecture was proved after more than 40 years by June Huh in 2009. A majority of Read's later work was done in Waterloo. Read received his Ph.D. (1959) in graph theory from the University of London.

Life and career Ronald Read served in the Royal Navy during World War II, then completed a degree in mathematics at the University of Cambridge before joining the University College of the West Indies (later the University of the West Indies) in Jamaica as the second founding member of the Mathematics Department there. In 1970 he moved his family to Canada to take up a post as Professor of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. While in Jamaica he became interested in cave exploration, and in 1957 he founded the Jamaica Caving Club. He had a lifelong interest in the making of string figures and is the inventor of the Olympic Flag String Figure. He was an accomplished musician and played many instruments including violin, viola, cello, double bass, piano, guitar, lute, and many early music instruments, some of which he also built. He had diplomas in Theory and in Composition from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada, and composed four works for orchestra and several pieces for smaller groups. Read died in January 2019 at the age of 94.

Selected papers An Introduction to Chromatic Polynomials. Journal of Combinatorial Theory 4 (1968) 52–71. Every One A Winner; or How to avoid isomorphism search when cataloguing combinatorial configurations. Annals of Discrete Mathematics 2, North-Holland Publishing Company (1978) 107–120. (With P. Rosenstiehl) On the Principal Edge Tripartition of a Graph. Annals of Discrete Mathematics 3, North-Holland Publishing Company, (1978) 195–226. (With W. T. Tutte), Chromatic Polynomials. Selected Topics in Graph Theory, Vol. 3 (1988) 15–42. (With C. D. Wright), Computing With Three-Colourable Graphs: a Survey, Ars Combin. Vol 29 (1990) 225–234. (with G. F. Royle) Chromatic Roots of Families of Graphs. Graph Theory, Combinatorics and Applications. John Wiley (1991) 1009–1029 Prospects for Graph-theoretical Algorithms. Annals of Discrete Mathematics 55 (1993) 201–210.

Books Read, Ronald C. (1965). Tangrams : 330 puzzles. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. ISBN 0-486-21483-4. OCLC 1136293. Read, Ronald C. (1972). A mathematical background for economists and social scientists. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-560987-9. OCLC 327336. Read, Ronald C. (1972). Graph theory and computing. Claude Berge. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-583850-6. OCLC 525261. Pólya, G.; Read, Ronald C. (1987). Combinatorial Enumeration of Groups, Graphs, and Chemical Compounds. New York, NY: Springer New York. ISBN 978-1-4612-4664-0. OCLC 840279750. Read, Ronald C.; Wilson, Robin J. (1998). An atlas of graphs. Robin J. Wilson. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-853289-X. OCLC 40647141.

See also List of University of Waterloo people

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ronald C. Read

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ronald C. Read claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, 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 Ronald C. Read 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 Ronald C. Read 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 Ronald C. Read

In research: Ronald C. Read appears in astronomy 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 Ronald C. Read 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: Ronald C. Read is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1924 births, 2019 deaths, 20th-century English mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ronald C. Read 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 Ronald C. Read in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ronald C. Read 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 Ronald C. Read out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ronald C. Read in simple terms?

Why does Ronald C. Read matter?

Because it connects several astronomy 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 Ronald C. Read?

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 Ronald C. Read.