The Scientific Works of Rainer

This short notice presents a summary of the scientific contributions of Rainer Kemp (1949–2004) in the area of discrete mathematics, combinatorial enumeration, and analysis of algorithms. A complete bibliography of Kemp’s publications is included. Rainer Kemp, Professor of computer science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt, passed away on May 14, 2004, eventually yielding to an illness that he had been fighting for one full year. His research career had started more than thirty years earlier: he defended his thesis supervised by Günter Hotz in 1973 and, already in 1972, he counted amongst the very few contributors to the first pan– European conference on theoretical computer science, the by now famous ICALP. In 32 years of academic scientific activity, Kemp wrote altogether 53 publications, of which a complete list appears in the bibliography section of this notice. Kemp’s research started with problems in the theory of formal languages, a by then prevalent branch of computer science in Europe. He was especially interested in “syntax analysis” or parsing and, even after switching subjects, would return to formal languages every so often. However, soon after his beginnings, his interests started to drift towards discrete mathematics, especially combinatorial enumeration and asymptotic methods, with many of the problems he considered being motivated by analysis of algorithms. It is in this area that he published the vast majority of his papers. At the same time, Kemp played an important rôle in organizing, jointly with the two senior authors of this note (P.F. and H.P.) the first three meetings held at Schloß Dagstuhl in 1993, 1995, and 1997. These meetings to which he dedicated much of his energies would play a crucial rôle in shaping up a community now referred to as “AofA”, a nickname for Analysis of Algorithms. The AofA community could accordingly develop a strong base in Europe as well as numerous ramifications worldwide, and we all are greatly indebted to Kemp for his commitment. We analyse below some of Kemp’s papers and have chosen to organise the presentation of his works into ten categories, to which is added a separate section on his book published by Teubner–Wiley in 1984. These works all bear Kemp’s mark: they are systematic, thorough, sometimes even extreme in their calculational aspects. They are testimonies of Kemp’s meticulous and rigorous attitude to scientific activity. As we all know, technical papers invariably contain minor errors and misprints—even a glance at the collected papers of a purist like G.H. Hardy will confirm this fact. In the case of Kemp, we are not aware of more than a handful such things in the whole of his works. Kemp’s sense of accuracy and completeness may render his works difficult to access by the uninitiated. This should not hide the fact that they contain a number of gems Date: February 6, 2005. ‡This material is based upon work supported by the National Research Foundation of South Africa under grant number 2053748.