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Background
Jonathan Farley is an associate professor of mathematics at Vanderbilt University. He holds an AB summa cum laude (1991) from Harvard University and a DPhil (1995) in mathematics from the University of Oxford.
Interests
Farley specializes in lattice theory, the theory of ordered sets, and discrete mathematics. During his two-year tenure at the Institute, Farley made many strides in his career. He solved a problem posed by Professor Richard Stanley of MIT in 1981 and a problem dating to 1971 posed by mathematician Richard Rado. The Chronicle of Higher Education and Science News Online profiled Farley’s lattice-theory applications to counterterrorism. Seed Magazine named Farley one of “15 people who have shaped the global conversation about science in 2005.”
At the height of his visit, the Harvard Foundation honored him with the 2004 Distinguished Scientist of the Year Award, a medal presented on behalf of the president of Harvard University in recognition of “outstanding achievements and contributions in the field of mathematics.” On that day, Mayor Michael Sullivan and the city council officially declared March 19 “Dr. Jonathan David Farley Day” in The City of Cambridge.
News Items
Math whiz fights terror with smarts
MLK Visiting Professor Jonathan Farley applies lattice theory to counterterrorism efforts.
MLK Visiting Professor, Scholar named; 4 continue as MLK profs
Koffi Maglo and Patricia Powell join the cohort of MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars.
4 new MLK Visiting Professors named
The MLK Visiting Professors include two mathematicians, a material scientist and an urbanologist.
Sample Work
Publication
The automorphism group of the Fibonacci poset: a ‘not too difficult’ problem of Stanley from 1988
Farley, Jonathan David and Sungsoon Kim. “The automorphism group of the Fibonacci poset: a ‘not too difficult’ problem of Stanley from 1988,” Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics 19 (2004), no. 2, 197-204.
Publication
Quasi-differential posets and cover functions of distributive lattices. II. A problem in Stanley’s Enumerative Combinatorics
Farley, Jonathan David. “Quasi-differential posets and cover functions of distributive lattices. II. A problem in Stanley’s Enumerative Combinatorics,” Graphs and Combinatorics 19 (2003), no. 4, 475-491.
Publication
Strictly order-preserving maps into Z. II. A 1979 problem of Erné
Farley, Jonathan David and Bernd S. W. Schröder. “Strictly order-preserving maps into Z. II. A 1979 problem of Erné,” Order 18 (2001), 381-385.
Publication
Coproducts of bounded distributive lattices: cancellation. A problem from the 1981 Banff Conference on Ordered Sets
Farley, Jonathan David. “Coproducts of bounded distributive lattices: cancellation. A problem from the 1981 Banff Conference on Ordered Sets,” Algebra Universalis 45 (2001), no. 4, 375-381.