Robert R. Korfhage Scientist
Robert Roy Korfhage (December 2, 1930 - November 20, 1998) was an American computer scientist, famous for his contributions to information retrieval and several textbooks.He was son of Dr. Roy Korfhage who as a chemist at Nestlé in Fulton, Oswego County, New York. Korfhagegot his bachelors (1952) in engineering mathematics at University of Michigan, while working part time at United Aircraft and Transport Corporation in East Hartford as programmer. At the same university, he got masters and Ph.D. (1962) in mathematics,his PhD dissertation being On Systems of Distinct Representatives for Several Collections of Setsadvised by Bernard Galler (1962).Korfhage then joinedthe faculty at North Carolina State University (1962–64), Purdue University (1964–70), Southern Methodist University (1970–86) and the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences (1986–98). Korfhage's research focused on graph theory and information retrieval, and he wrote several textbooks and edited several collections in his area. In his later years, he worked on new ways of information visualization and also genetic algorithms to optimize text queries.He died of cancer in Pittsburgh.