Dominic Welsh: his work and influence

Abstract

We review the work of Dominic Welsh (1938-2023), tracing his remarkable influence through his theorems, expository writing, students, and interactions. He was particularly adept at bringing different fields together and fostering the development of mathematics and mathematicians. His contributions ranged widely across discrete mathematics over four main career phases: discrete probability, matroids and graphs, computational complexity, and Tutte-Whitney polynomials. We give particular emphasis to his work in matroid theory and Tutte-Whitney polynomials.