David E. Muller

David Eugene Muller (November 2, 1924 – April 27, 2008) was an American mathematician and computer scientist. He was a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Illinois (1953–92), after which he became an emeritus professor, and was an adjunct professor of mathematics at the New Mexico State University (1995–2008). Muller received his BS in 1947 and his PhD in 1951 in physics from Caltech; an honorary PhD was conferred by the University of Paris in 1989. He was the inventor of the Muller C-element (or Muller C-gate), a device used to implement asynchronous circuitry in electronic computers. He also co-invented the Reed–Muller codes. He discovered the codes, and Irving S. Reed proposed the majority logic decoding for the first time. Furthermore, he invented Muller automata, an automaton model for infinite words. In geometric group theory Muller is known for the Muller–Schupp theorem, joint with Paul Schupp, characterizing finitely generated virtually free groups as finitely generated groups with context-free word problem.