Victor Klee

Victor LaRue Klee, Jr. was a mathematician specialising in convex sets, functional analysis, analysis of algorithms, optimization, and combinatorics. He spent almost his entire career at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Life

Born in San Francisco, Klee earned his B.A. degree in 1945 with high honors from Pomona College, majoring in mathematics and chemistry. He did his graduate studies, including a thesis titled Convex Sets in Linear Spaces, and received his PhD in mathematics from the University of Virginia in 1949. After teaching for several years at the University of Virginia, he moved in 1953 to the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, where he was a faculty member for 54 years.
He died in Lakewood, Ohio.

Research

Klee wrote more than 240 research papers. He proposed Klee's measure problem and the art gallery problem. Kleetopes are also named after him, as is the Klee–Minty cube, which shows that the simplex algorithm for linear programming does not work in polynomial time in the worst case.

Service and recognition

Klee served as president of the Mathematical Association of America from 1971 to 1973. In 1972 he won a Lester R. Ford Award. In 1977, the MAA recognized Klee by presenting him with their Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics.