Dear colleagues,
With a great sorrow I am informing you that Georgii Maksimovich (Gera,
Giora) Adelson-Velsky passed away yesterday, at age 92.
Gera was a legendary founder of two famous Soviet Computer Science schools:
in algorithms and data structures and in chess programming, which both arose
before the term of Computer Science.
His AVL-trees (joint with E.M. Landis) were one of the very first,
precedental examples of a dynamic data structure. His entire approach to
effective algorithms was based on the amortized analysis of their running
time, which was realized in the West many years later. His fascinating
teaching educated the authors of such famous works as the Four Russian
algorithm, the sorting algorithm using no working memory, network flow
algorithms, graph isomorphism theory and algorithms, bio-informatic
algorithms, and others. His approach was so far ahead the current view to
algorithms in the West that some algorithms of him and of his Soviet
followers were hardly understood in the West at the time of their
publication.
Gera, together with A.L. Brudno, originated the game programming theory in
the USSR, simultaneously with the West. The Soviet Kaissa chess program
project (lead by him jointly with V.L. Arlazarov and M.V.Donskoy) produced
the first world champion among chess programs.
G.M. Adelson-Velsky will remain in the history of Computer Science as one of
its fathers.
Sincerely,
Yefim Dinitz, a student of Gera since 1968
Computer Science Dept.
Ben-Gurion University in the Negev
Israel