Review of Classic Papers in Combinatorics

摘要

The book Classic Papers in Combinatorics edited by Gessel and Rota chronicles the development of combinatorics by reprinting 39 papers from the period of 1930 to 1973 - a span of 44 years. These are definitely the formative years for many branches of combinatorial theory. The papers are arranged in a completely chronological order, starting with Ramsey's paper of 1930 (Ramsey theory) and ending with Geissinger's three part paper of 1973 (Mobius functions). The authors of the papers collected in this volume are giants of the field; however this book (rightly) does not try to collect representative papers from all famous combinatorists. A more important goal perhaps is to include representative papers from all areas of combinatorics - and it might have fallen a little short of that goal.