John Riordan (mathematician)

John F. Riordan (April 22, 1903 – August 27, 1988) was an American mathematician and the author of major early works in combinatorics, particularly Introduction to Combinatorial Analysis and Combinatorial Identities.

Riordan was a graduate of Yale University. In his early life he wrote a number of poems and essays and a book of short-stories, On the Make, published in 1929, and was Editor-in-Chief of Salient and The Figure in the Carpet, literary magazines published by The New School for Social Research in New York. He married Mavis McIntosh, the well-known poet and literary agent and founder of McIntosh & Otis. The couple had two daughters: Sheila Riordan and Kathleen Riordan Speeth, and were long time residents of Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Riordan's long professional career was at Bell Labs, which he joined in 1926 (a year after its foundation) and where he remained, publishing over a hundred scholarly papers on combinatorial analysis, until he retired in 1968. He then joined the faculty at Rockefeller University as professor emeritus. A Festschrift was published in his honor in 1978.

Throughout his life Riordan led an active literary life, with many distinguished friends such as Kenneth Burke, William Carlos Williams, and A. R. Orage.

From the Introduction by Marc Kac to the Special Issue of the JCTA in honor of John Riordan:

From an interview with Neil Sloane published by Bell Labs:

•   (book of 14 short-stories)
•  
•   (reissued in 1980; reprinted again in 2002 by Courier Dover Publications) translated into Russian in 1962.
•  
•   (reprinted with corrections:  )