Solving a long-standing conjecture proposed by Paul Erdős and László Lovász in 1974 secured Michel Deza’s reputation in combinatorics, earning him a modest hundred-dollar prize. That initial breakthrough catalyzed a productive career spanning four decades, during which he explored the deep intersections of discrete geometry, metric spaces, and graph theory across Soviet and French institutions.
Academic Foundations and Emigration
Born in Moscow in 1939, Deza pursued his foundational studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University, graduating from the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics in 1961. Following his graduation, he contributed to research at the Soviet Academy of Sciences for over a decade. In 1972, he emigrated to France, transitioning into a long-term position at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), where he remained until his retirement in 2005.
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Deza’s research output included approximately 280 academic papers written alongside 75 different co-authors. His work frequently intersected with polyhedral combinatorics and the study of metric polyhedra. Notably, his exploration of cut cones and L1-embeddable graphs provided significant insights into the structural properties of metric spaces. Beyond his theoretical focus, he acted as a founding editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Combinatorics, shaping the dissemination of research in his field.
Collaboration and Legacy
The scale of his collaborative work was marked by an Erdős number of 1, reflecting his direct partnership with Paul Erdős. Deza’s later career involved extensive authorship of books, including the Dictionary of Distances and the Encyclopedia of Distances, which underwent four editions by 2016. In his later years, he served as a research professor at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and vice president of the European Academy of Sciences. He died in 2016 in the 10th arrondissement of Paris.
Fast facts
- Born: 1939, Moscow
- Died: 2016, 10th arrondissement of Paris
- Education: Lomonosov Moscow State University
- Erdős number: 1
- Key fields: Geometry, combinatorics, graph theory
- Languages: French, Russian
- Citizenship: Soviet Union, France
Questions readers ask
What was Michel Deza's primary area of research?
He specialized in combinatorics, discrete geometry, and graph theory, focusing particularly on metric spaces and polyhedral combinatorics.
Did he write any books?
Yes, he authored or co-authored several notable texts, including the Dictionary of Distances and the multi-edition Encyclopedia of Distances, as well as works on chemical graph theory.
Achievements
- Fields: combinatorics, graph theory and geometry
