Jiri Matousek

Department of Applied Mathematics, Charles University, Prague, and Institute of Theoretical Computer Science, ETH Zurich

Prof. Jiri Matousek passed away after a serious illness on March 9th, 2015. Obituary.

Uceni/teaching in Prague (in Czech)

Lehre/teaching in Zurich

A disclaimer concerning applications for internships etc. (please read this before e-mailing me in such matters)

NEW: Computer Science Bc. and MSc. programs in English in Prague

The Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the Charles University opens new study programs in Copmputer Science starting in fall 2013. This is basically the time-proven curriculum we have been teaching for a number of years, but now also taught in English. Note that it also offers the possibility of attending the classes taught by members of the Department of Applied Mathematics.

Scientific writings

Recent papers; old papers that may be difficult to access in libraries; list of publications.

Books

Approximation Algorithms and Semidefinite Programming , with Bernd G"artner, Springer 2012.
Thirty-three miniatures (mathematical and algorithmic applications of linear algebra) (Amer. Math. Soc., summer 2010). Here is a preliminary version on-line. A Japanese translation by Norihide Tokushige appeared in 2014.
Using the Borsuk-Ulam theorem (Lectures on topological methods in combinatorics and geometry) (Springer, April 2003), corrected and updated 2nd printing in fall 2007.
Understanding and using linear programming with Bernd G"artner, Springer, October 2006.
Lectures on Discrete Geometry (Springer, May 2002), errata. Japanese translation, by Yoshio Okamoto, was published by Springer Tokyo in 2005. Here is Chapter 15, Embedding finite metric spaces into normed spaces, revised and extended in September 2005 to reflect some of the exciciting developments in last 3 years (it appears in the Japanese edition). Here is the updated bibliography.
Invitation to Discrete Mathematics (with Jaroslav Nesetril, Oxford University Press 1998); errata. A second edition, with two new chapters and several new sections, published by OUP in November 2008.
- German edition (Springer), Diskrete Mathematik (Eine Entdeckungsreise), translated by Hans Mielke, and errata to it. A second edition with two new chapters and several new sections published in fall 2007.
- Japanese edition translated by Seiya Negami and Atsuhiro Nakamoto and published by Springer Tokyo. For errata please consult the list for the German edition; both translations are from the same source and so the errors should be similar, although, of course, the page numbers differ.
- French edition (Springer 2004), Introduction aux mathématiques discrétes, translated by Delphine Hachez. For errata, too, please consult the list for the German edition (no offence to the French national feelings intended), although a few of the mistakes have been corrected.
- Spanish edition, Invitacion a la matematica discreta, translated by Anna S. Llado, published by Editorial Reverte.
- Italian and Chinese editions in preparation.
Geometric Discrepancy (An Illustrated Guide), Springer 1999; corrected and updated 2nd printing, with a brief survey of new results 2010, publisher's page.

Other on-line materials

The probabilistic method (lecture notes, with Jan Vondrak)
Lecture Notes on Metric Embeddings; the same thing with two small pages per sheet.
Other lecture notes.
Open problems on low-distortion embeddings of finite metric spaces. Last revised August 2011 jointly with Assaf Naor.
- If you know of a substantial progress directly relevant to some of the problems that is not mentioned in the last version, please e-mail to Assaf Naor or to me. (In order to keep the list of bounded size, we generally prefer sticking to the specific questions asked by the proposers and not to go into more loosely related results and topics.)
PhD Thesis of Petr Skovron on LP-type problems, violator spaces and such, with some results not published elsewhere.

A note on publishing in journals

Currently I'm trying to prefer reasonably priced mathematical journals and, in particular, open-access (i.e., zero price) journals - in submitting my papers and also in deciding which refereeing and editorial jobs to accept. Here is a survey of prices of math journals (sorted by price per page).

An interesting new development in this direction is a publicly declared boycott of Elsevier, which I also joined (also see this statement of purpose signed by a number of great mathematicians, and this report with some tables and arguments).

Contact

Email: "matousek" then the at sign and then kam mff cuni cz, separated by dots, of course.

Phone (in Prague): (+420) 2 2191 4290

Mailing address:: Department of Applied Mathematics; Malostranske namesti 25; 118 00 Praha 1; Czech Republic

A quotation

Nicholas was not to be of the party; he was in disgrace. Only that morning he had refused to eat his wholesome bread-and-milk on the seemingly frivolous ground that there was a frog in it. Older and wiser and better people had told him that there could not possibly be a frog in his bread-and-milk and that he was not to talk nonsense; he continued, nevertheless, to talk what seemed the veriest nonsense, and described with much detail the colourations and markings of the alleged frog. The dramatic part of the incident was that there really was a frog in Nicholas' basin of bread-and-milk; he had put it there himself, so he felt entitled to know something about it. The sin of taking a frog from the garden and putting it into a bowl of wholesome bread-and-milk was enlarged on at great length, but the fact that stood out clearest in the whole affair, as it presented itself to the mind of Nicholas, was that the older, wiser, and better people had been proved to be profoundly in error in matters about which they had expressed the utmost assurance.

-- H. H. Munro (Saki), in: The Best of Saki, Pan Books, London 1976