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 was a chemist at Nestlé in Fulton, Oswego County, New York. Korfhage earned his bachelor's degree (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 earned a master's degree and Ph.D. (1962) in mathematics, his PhD dissertation being On Systems of Distinct Representatives for Several Collections of Sets advised by Bernard Galler (1962).
Korfhage taught mathematics at North Carolina State University (1962–64), Purdue University (1964–70),40th year anniversary featuring a picture of Dr. Korfhage. 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. For instance, his Information Storage and Retrieval (1997) was winner of American Society for Information Science and Technology Best information science book award (1998).Inside ASIS December 1998
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.
Books 1966: Logic and Algorithms, Wiley 1970: (with Harley Flanders) Calculus, Academic Press 1974: (with Harley Flanders and Justin Jesse Price) A Second Course in Calculus, Academic Press 1984: Discrete Computational Structures, Academic Press 1987: (with Norman E. Gibbs) Principles of Data Structures and Algorithms with Pascal, William C. Brown Publications 1997: Information Storage and Retrieval, Wiley.
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