Norman J. Pullman (1931 - 1999)
Norm Pullman was born in New York in 1931.
After a brief career as
a commercial artist, he obtained his M.A. in mathematics at Harvard
and his Ph.D. at the University of Syracuse (1962) under the
supervision of Peter Frank. He taught at McGill University from
1962 to 1965, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University
of Alberta in 1965-66. He then moved to Queen's, where he taught
until his retirement in 1994.
Throughout his career, he made significant contributions to the
study of powers of nonnegative matrices, as well as to the theory of
tournaments, graph decompositions, and linear preserver problems.
He published over 80 papers in the areas of matrix theory and graph
theory, as well as the book "Matrix Theory and its Applications"
(Dekker, 1976). While at Queen's, he supervised 15 graduate
students, including 4 doctoral students. His personal and
professional contributions were honoured in the festschrift "Graphs,
Matrices, and Designs" (Dekker, 1993, R. Rees, Ed.), which marked
the occasion of his 60th birthday.
Professor Pullman passed away on 28 May 1999 after a struggle
with ALS.
An insightful researcher, a supportive and respected collaborator, a
valued colleague and friend, Norm will be fondly remembered for his
generosity, his sound counsel, and above all for his warm and lively
sense of humour.
