FYI October 28, 2019

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On This Day

1942 – The Alaska Highway first connects Alaska to the North American railway network at Dawson Creek in Canada.
The Alaska Highway (French: Route de l’Alaska; also known as the Alaskan Highway, Alaska-Canadian Highway, or ALCAN Highway) was constructed during World War II to connect the contiguous United States to Alaska across Canada. It begins at the junction with several Canadian highways in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, and runs to Delta Junction, Alaska, via Whitehorse, Yukon. When it was completed in 1942 it was about 2,700 kilometres (1,700 mi); but in 2012 it was only 2,232 km (1,387 mi). This is due to the continuing reconstruction of the highway, which has rerouted and straightened many sections. The highway opened to the public in 1948.[1] Once legendary for being a rough, challenging drive, the highway is now paved over its entire length.[2] Its component highways are British Columbia Highway 97, Yukon Highway 1 and Alaska Route 2.

An informal system of historic mileposts developed over the years to denote major stopping points. Delta Junction, at the end of the highway, makes reference to its location at “Historic Milepost 1422”.[2] It is at this point that the Alaska Highway meets the Richardson Highway, which continues 155 km (96 mi) to the city of Fairbanks. This is often regarded, though unofficially, as the northwestern portion of the Alaska Highway, with Fairbanks at Historic Milepost 1520.[2] Mileposts on this stretch of highway are measured from the port of Valdez on Prince William Sound, rather than the Alaska Highway. The Alaska Highway is popularly (but unofficially) considered part of the Pan-American Highway, which extends south (despite its discontinuity in Panama) to Argentina.[3]
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Born On This Day

1905 – Tatyana Pavlovna Ehrenfest, Dutch mathematician (d. 1984)
Tatyana Pavlovna Ehrenfest, later van Aardenne-Ehrenfest, (Vienna, October 28, 1905 – Dordrecht, November 29, 1984) was a Dutch mathematician. She was the daughter of Paul Ehrenfest (1880–1933) and Tatyana Alexeyevna Afanasyeva (1876–1964).

Under her married name, Tanja van Aardenne-Ehrenfest, she is known for her contributions to De Bruijn sequences, low-discrepancy sequences, and the BEST theorem.

Education
Tatyana Ehrenfest was born in Vienna, and spent her childhood in St Petersburg. In 1912 the Ehrenfests moved to Leiden where her father succeeded H.A. Lorentz as professor at the University of Leiden. Until 1917 she was home schooled, after that she attended the Gymnasium in Leiden and passed the final exams in 1922. She studied mathematics and physics at the University of Leiden. In 1928 she went to Göttingen where she took courses from Harald Bohr and Max Born. On December 8, 1931 she obtained her Ph.D. in Leiden.[1] After that, she was never employed and, in particular, never held any academic position.[2]

Contributions
De Bruijn sequences are cyclic sequences of symbols for a given alphabet and parameter k {\displaystyle k} k such that every length- k {\displaystyle k} k subsequence occurs exactly once within them. They are named after Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn, despite their earlier discovery (for binary alphabets) by Camille Flye Sainte-Marie. De Bruijn and Ehrenfest jointly published the first investigation into de Bruijn sequences for larger alphabets, in 1951.[3]

The BEST theorem, also known as the de Bruijn-van Aardenne Ehrenfest-Smith-Tutte theorem, relates Euler tours and spanning trees in directed graphs, and gives a product formula for their number. It is a variant of an earlier formula of Smith and Tutte, and was published by de Bruijn and Ehrenfest in the same paper as their work on de Bruijn sequences.[4]

Ehrenfest is also known for her proof of a lower bound on low-discrepancy sequences.[5]

 
 

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