Ivan Rival was a Canadian mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

 and computer scientist

Computer scientist

A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....

, a professor of mathematics at the University of Calgary

University of Calgary

The University of Calgary is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1966 the U of C is composed of 14 faculties and more than 85 research institutes and centres.More than 25,000 undergraduate and 5,500 graduate students are currently...

 and of computer science at the University of Ottawa

University of Ottawa

The University of Ottawa is a bilingual, research-intensive, non-denominational, international university in Ottawa, Ontario. It is one of the oldest universities in Canada. It was originally established as the College of Bytown in 1848 by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate...

.

Rival's Ph.D. thesis concerned lattice theory

Lattice (order)

In mathematics, a lattice is a partially ordered set in which any two elements have a unique supremum and an infimum . Lattices can also be characterized as algebraic structures satisfying certain axiomatic identities...

. After moving to Calgary he began to work more generally with partially ordered set

Partially ordered set

In mathematics, especially order theory, a partially ordered set formalizes and generalizes the intuitive concept of an ordering, sequencing, or arrangement of the elements of a set. A poset consists of a set together with a binary relation that indicates that, for certain pairs of elements in the...

s, and to study fixed point theorems for partially ordered structures. He was a frequent organizer of conferences in order theory

Order theory

Order theory is a branch of mathematics which investigates our intuitive notion of order using binary relations. It provides a formal framework for describing statements such as "this is less than that" or "this precedes that". This article introduces the field and gives some basic definitions...

, and in 1984 he founded the journal Order

Order (journal)

Order is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal on order theory and its applications, published by Springer Science+Business Media. It was founded in 1984 by University of Calgary mathematics professor Ivan Rival; as of 2010, its editor in chief is Dwight Duffus, the Goodrich C...

. As a computer scientist at Ottawa, he shifted research topics, applying his expertise in order theory to the study of data structure

Data structure

In computer science, a data structure is a particular way of storing and organizing data in a computer so that it can be used efficiently.Different kinds of data structures are suited to different kinds of applications, and some are highly specialized to specific tasks...

s, computational geometry

Computational geometry

Computational geometry is a branch of computer science devoted to the study of algorithms which can be stated in terms of geometry. Some purely geometrical problems arise out of the study of computational geometric algorithms, and such problems are also considered to be part of computational...

, and graph drawing

Graph drawing

Graph drawing is an area of mathematics and computer science combining methods from geometric graph theory and information visualization to derive two-dimensional depictions of graphs arising from applications such as social network analysis, cartography, and bioinformatics...

.

Rival grew up in Hamilton, Ontario

Hamilton, Ontario

Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, Hamilton has become the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe...

. He earned a bachelor's degree at McMaster University

McMaster University

McMaster University is a public research university whose main campus is located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land in the residential neighbourhood of Westdale, adjacent to Hamilton's Royal Botanical Gardens...

 in 1969, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Manitoba

University of Manitoba

The University of Manitoba , in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, is the largest university in the province of Manitoba. It is Manitoba's most comprehensive and only research-intensive post-secondary educational institution. It was founded in 1877, making it Western Canada’s first university. It placed...

 in 1974 under the supervision of George Gratzer. After postdoctoral stints visiting Robert Dilworth at Caltech and Rudolf Wille

Rudolf Wille

Rudolf Wille is a German Mathematician and was Professor of General Algebra from 1970 to 2003 at Technische Universität Darmstadt...

 at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, he took a faculty position at Calgary in 1975, and was promoted to full professor in 1981. In 1986, he moved to the University of Ottawa, where he became chair of the computer science department.

Rival's doctoral students included Dwight Duffus

Dwight Duffus

Dwight Albert Duffus is a Canadian-American mathematician, the Goodrich C. White Professor of Mathematics & Computer Science at Emory University and editor-in-chief of the journal Order....

, the Goodrich C. White Professor of Mathematics & Computer Science at Emory University

Emory University

Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...

. Duffus took over the editorship of Order after Rival's death.

External links

• The Ivan Rival Memorial Website