Robert R. Korfhage
Robert Roy Korfhage (December 2, 1930 – November 20, 1998) was an American computer scientist, famous for his contributions to information retrieval and several textbooks. He was son of Dr. Roy Korfhage who was a chemist at Nestlé in Fulton, Oswego County, New York. Korfhage earned his bachelor's degree (1952) in engineering mathematics at University of Michigan, while working part-time at United Aircraft and Transport Corporation in East Hartford as programmer. At the same university, he earned a master's degree and Ph.D. (1962) in mathematics, his PhD dissertation being "On Systems of Distinct Representatives for  Several Collections of Sets" advised by Bernard Galler (1962). Korfhage taught mathematics at North Carolina State University (1962–64), Purdue University (1964–70), Southern Methodist University (1970–86) and the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences (1986–98). Korfhage's research focused on graph theory and information retrieval. For instance, his "Information Storage and Retrieval" (1997) was winner of American Society for Information Science and Technology "Best information science book" award (1998). In his later years, he worked on new ways of information visualization and also genetic algorithms to optimize text queries. He died of cancer in Pittsburgh.