Brendan McKay (mathematician)

McKay is the author of at least 127 refereed articles.

One of McKay's main contributions has been a practical algorithm for the graph isomorphism problem and its software implementation NAUTY (No AUTomorphisms, Yes?).Pontifex Praeteritorum, [http://dabacon.org/pontiff/?p=4148 Reading List: Graph Isomorphism The Quantum Pontiff (blog)] 4 August 2010 Further achievements include proving with Stanisław Radziszowski that the Ramsey number R(4,5) = 25; proving with Radziszowski that no 4-(12, 6, 6) combinatorial designs exist, determining with Gunnar Brinkmann, the number of posets on 16 points, and determining with Ian Wanless the number of Latin squares of size 11.Brendan D. McKay, Ian M. Wanless, [https://arxiv.org/abs/0909.2101 'On the number of Latin squares,'] Annaals of Combinatorics 9 (2009) pp. 335–344. Together with Brinkmann, he also developed the Plantri programme for generating planar triangulations and planar cubic graphs.Siemion Fajtlowicz (ed.), [https://books.google.com/books?id=DGiRaIqjzJ8C&pg=PR10 Graphs and Discovery: DIMACS Working Group, Computer-generated Conjectures from Graph Theoretical and Chemical Databases,] American Mathematical Soc., 2005 p.x.

The McKay–Miller–Širáň graphs, a class of highly-symmetric graphs with diameter two and many vertices relative to their degree, are named in part for McKay, who first wrote about them with Mirka Miller and Jozef Širáň in 1998.{{citation|last1=McKay|first1=Brendan D.|last2=Miller|first2=Mirka|author2-link=Mirka Miller|last3=Širáň|first3=Jozef|doi=10.1006/jctb.1998.1828|issue=1|journal=Journal of Combinatorial Theory|mr=1644043|pages=110–118|series=Series B|title=A note on large graphs of diameter two and given maximum degree|volume=74|year=1998|doi-access=free}}

Outside of his specialty, McKay is best known for leading a team[https://www.timesofisrael.com/eliyahu-rips-mathematician-who-claimed-to-find-hidden-code-in-bible-dies-at-75/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2024-08-31 'Eliyahu Rips, mathematician who claimed to find hidden code in Bible, dies at 75,'] The Times of Israel 31 August 2024. of Israeli mathematicians such as Dror Bar-Natan and Gil Kalai, together with Maya Bar-Hillel, who rebutted a Bible code theory advanced by Eliyahu Rips, Yoav Rosenberg and Doron Witztum, which maintained that the Hebrew text of the Bible enciphered predictive details of future historical events. The paper in question had been accepted for publication by a scientific peer-reviewed journal in 1994.Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg, 'Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis,' Statistical Science, Vol. 9 (1994) 429–438.Brendan McKay, Dror Bar-Natan, Maya Bar-Hillel, Gil Kalai, [http://users.cecs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/codes/statsci/StatSci.pdf 'Solving the Bible Code Puzzle,'] Statistical Science, Vol. 14 (1999) 150–173.Jordan Ellenberg, [https://books.google.com/books?id=2k9KAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT311 How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking,] Penguin, 2014 pp. 99–101. Their rebuttal, together with a paper written by an anonymous mathematician, argued that the patterns in the Bible that supposedly indicate some hidden message from a divine source or have predictive power can be just as easily found in other works, such as War and Peace.[http://users.cecs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/codes/WNP/Rebuttal.pdf Equidistant Letter Sequences] in Tolstoy's War and Peace. The discredited theory was taken up by US journalist Michael Drosnin. {{cite journal | author = Sharon Begley and John Barry | title = Seek and ye shall find | journal = Newsweek | volume = 129 | issue = 23 | pages = 66–67 | date = 9 June 1997}}{{cite news|url=http://www.nzz.ch/2004/08/18/ft/article9PRR2.html|title=Botschaften des Allmächtigen oder zurechtgeschusterte Daten?|date=18 August 2004|work=Neue Zürcher Zeitung|access-date=28 February 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080122041752/http://www.nzz.ch/2004/08/18/ft/article9PRR2.html|archive-date=22 January 2008|df=dmy-all}} Drosnin said he was convinced of this theory when one of its exponents stated that the Torah predicted the Iraqi wars. He expressed his certainty publicly that such coded messages could not be found in any other work than the Bible, and, in an interview with Newsweek, he challenged:

"When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them."

In response, McKay employed the same Bible decryption method described by Rips' group, quickly found some nine references to Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in Herman Melville's masterpiece. He also showed that the same technique allowed him to find ostensible mentions not only of the assassinations of Martin Luther King, JFK, and Abraham Lincoln but also references to Diana, Princess of Wales, her lover Dodi Fayed, and their chauffeur Henri Paul in the same novel.Gérald Bronner, [https://books.google.com/books?id=2qotCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA51 Belief and Misbelief Asymmetry on the Internet,] John Wiley & Sons, 2016 pp.50-51.

This debunking disproof of a theory that the bible encrypts secret messages containing future world history achieved international fame for McKay outside of his specific field of combinatorics. Persi Diaconis, Ronald L. Graham, [https://books.google.com/books?id=CS2S5l2FN34C&pg=PA43 Magical Mathematics: The Mathematical Ideas that Animate Great Magic Tricks,] Princeton University Press 2011 p.43.'Brendan McKay came from Australia. He is a great combinatorialist who has achieved world-wide fame outside mathematics for his definite debunking of the so-called Bible codes'{{cite web |author=H. J. Gans. |url=http://www.aish.com/seminars/discovery/Codes/Primer/primer1.htm |title=A Primer on the Torah Codes Controversy for Laymen (part 1) |publisher= aish.com |access-date=7 April 2008| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080318163420/http://www.aish.com/seminars/discovery/Codes/Primer/primer1.htm| archive-date= 18 March 2008 | url-status= live}}{{cite web |url=http://ratio.huji.ac.il/dp/dp_365.pdf |title=Analysis of the "Gans" Committee Report |access-date=2010-05-02 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060625075656/http://ratio.huji.ac.il/dp/dp_365.pdf |archive-date=25 June 2006 |df=dmy-all }}

McKay also uncovered the original source of the Azzam Pasha quotation. The original source, an 11 October 1947 article in the Egyptian newspaper Akhbar al-Yom, was first referenced in an article by David Barnett and Efraim Karsh in the Fall 2011 issue of Middle East Quarterly without reference to McKay.David Barnett and Efraim Karsh (2011). [http://www.meforum.org/3082/azzam-genocide-threat "Azzam's Genocidal Threat".] Middle East Quarterly, 18 (4) pp. 85–88. Tom Segev responded in an op-ed in Haaretz that McKay had in fact been the original source of the material and had uploaded it to Wikipedia.Tom Segev, [https://www.haaretz.com/2011-10-21/ty-article/the-makings-of-history-the-blind-misleading-the-blind/0000017f-db5e-d3a5-af7f-fbfe049b0000 '"Makings of History / The Blind Misleading the Blind,"] Haaretz 21 October 2011 McKay had notified the Wikipedia talk page of having found the original interview from which the quote was taken and later provided it to Barnett. According to Karsh, McKay was offered a co-author credit in the Middle East Quarterly article but he declined on the grounds of having a low opinion of the publication.{{cite web | last=Karsh | first=Efraim | title=Haaretz: The Paper for Thinking People? | website=Middle East Forum | date=2011-12-16 | url=https://www.meforum.org/3130/haaretz-newspaper | access-date=2022-06-30}}

He gave an invited talk at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2010, on the topic of "Combinatorics".{{cite web|title=ICM Plenary and Invited Speakers since 1897|url=https://www.mathunion.org/icm-plenary-and-invited-speakers?combine=McKay|publisher=International Congress of Mathematicians}} Notable students include Jeanette McLeod.{{Cite web |title=Jeanette McLeod - The Mathematics Genealogy Project |url=https://mathgenealogy.org/id.php?id=108565 |access-date=2023-04-09 |website=mathgenealogy.org}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{official website|http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm}}
• [http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/plantri/ Plantri and Fullgen], programs for generation of certain types of planar graphs, developed by Brinkmann and McKay
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20070929050401/http://www.thebiblecodes.com/claims/math/drosnin-mckay.htm] Excerpt from a transcript of the debate between Drosnin and McKay, in October 1997

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Category:20th-century Australian mathematicians

Category:21st-century Australian mathematicians

Category:Australian computer scientists

Category:Academic staff of the Australian National University

Category:Combinatorialists

Category:University of Melbourne alumni

Category:Mathematicians from Melbourne

Category:1951 births

Category:Living people

Category:Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science