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Randall Dougherty

Randall Dougherty is an American mathematician. Dougherty has made contributions in widely varying areas of mathematics, including set theory, logic, real analysis, discrete mathematics, computational geometry, information theory, and coding theory.

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Randall Dougherty
Randall Dougherty taking a swim 2009
Born1961 (age 64–65)
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsOhio State University
Jack Silver

Randall Dougherty (born 1961) is an American mathematician. Dougherty has made contributions in widely varying areas of mathematics, including set theory, logic, real analysis, discrete mathematics, computational geometry, information theory, and coding theory.1

Dougherty is a three-time winner of the U.S.A. Mathematical Olympiad (1976, 1977, 1978) and a three-time medalist in the International Mathematical Olympiad.2 He is also a three-time Putnam Fellow (1978, 1979, 1980).3 Dougherty earned his Ph.D. in 1985 at University of California, Berkeley under the direction of Jack Silver.4

With Matthew Foreman he showed that the Banach-Tarski decomposition is possible with pieces with the Baire property, solving a problem of Marczewski that remained unsolved for more than 60 years.5 With Chris Freiling and Ken Zeger, he showed that linear codes are insufficient to gain the full advantages of network coding.6

Selected publications

References

References

  1. "DBLP: Randall Dougherty". www.informatik.uni-trier.de. Archived from the original on 2012-04-04. Retrieved 2026-02-19.
  2. Randall Dougherty's results at International Mathematical Olympiad
  3. ""The Mathematical Association of America's William Lowell Putnam Competition"". Archived from the original on 2000-02-29. Retrieved 2010-07-24.
  4. Randall Dougherty at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. "ALUMNEWS | Department of Mathematics". www.math.ohio-state.edu. Archived from the original on 2011-01-02. Retrieved 2026-02-19.
  6. Dougherty, Freiling, and Zeger. Insufficiency of Linear Coding in Network Information Flow.[1] and [2]