By Doron Zeilberger
Copyright(c)2000 by Academic Press
(available from IDEAL).
Written: March 30, 2000.
In Fond Mermory of Gian-Carlo ROTA (April 27, 1932- April 18, 1999)
Gian-Carlo ROTA was one of the giants of 20th-century mathematics,
but some of his ideas will be even more seminal in the 21st-century.
The present article, hopefully to be followed by four others,
attempts to illustrate this statement.
My appreciation of Gian-Carlo was an almost perodic function.
Most of the times I admired him as the GREATEST combinatorial
GENIUS of all times, but sometimes I dismissed him as
a "flake". Only later did I realize that these two epithets
are compatible rather than contradictory.
TRUE geniuses must have some flakiness in them.
IMPORTANT: This article is accompanied by a Maple package
ROTA.
Doron Zeilberger's List of Papers
.pdf
.ps
.tex
Appeared in J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A, v. 91 (2000),
451-463. [Rota Memorial issue]