Joel Spencer
Joel Spencer (born April 20, 1946) is an American mathematician. He is a combinatorialist who has worked on probabilistic methods in combinatorics and on Ramsey theory. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1970, under the supervision of Andrew Gleason. He is currently (as of 2015) a professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University.
In 1984 Spencer received a Lester R. Ford Award. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
Selected publications
Probabilistic methods in combinatorics, with Paul Erdős, New York: Academic Press, 1974.
Ramsey theory, with Bruce L. Rothschild and Ronald L. Graham, New York: Wiley, 1980; 2nd ed., 1990.
Ten lectures on the probabilistic method, Philadelphia: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 1987; 2nd ed., 1994.
The probabilistic method, with Noga Alon, New York: Wiley, 1992; 2nd ed., 2000; 3rd ed., 2008
The strange logic of random graphs, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2001.
