Jump to content

Draft:William Martin Boyce

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



William Martin Boyce
Born (1938-04-21) April 21, 1938 (age 86)
Florence, South Carolina, U.S.
Alma materTulane University
SpouseSusie B. Boyce
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
Finance
Computer Science
InstitutionsNASA Manned Spaceflight Center
Bell Laboratories
Salomon Brothers

William Martin Boyce (born 1938) is an American mathematician, bond analyst, and computer scientist. He received a B.S. (1959) and M.S. (1960) from Florida State University and a Ph.D. (1967) from Tulane University.[1]

Boyce's doctoral thesis addressed the "common fixed point problem," solving a mathematical problem first posed 13 years earlier by demonstrating the existence of commuting functions without a common fixed point.[2] His research involved the concept of "Baxter permutations," a term he coined to describe a class of permutations related to the fixed points of commuting functions, based on criteria defined by Glen Baxter in 1963. Boyce developed a FORTRAN program to generate Baxter permutations and search for counterexamples to the common fixed point problem,[3] making this thesis one of the earliest examples of a computer-assisted proof.[4] His 1981 paper, "Baxter Permutations and Functional Composition,"[5] explored Baxter permutations beyond the context of commuting functions.

Career

[edit]

From 1963 to 1965, Boyce served as an officer in the U.S. Army the staff of the U.S. Army Security Agency Training Center and School. In 1965, he joined the Apollo program at NASA, and was head of the Navigational Analysis Section from 1966 to 1967.[1]

After receiving his Ph.D., Boyce joined Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ. His work there encompassed business data processing, financial modeling, economic theory, computational graph theory, and applied probability and management science.[1] In 1970, he became head of the Mathematics Analysis Department. He created an improved computer algorithms for calculating minimal Euclidean Steiner trees, which he published as STEINER72 and STEINER73,[6] and which influenced later research.[7]

In the early 1970s, Boyce began to work on stochastic bond pricing models for the Bell System and, in collaboration with Andrew Kalotay, created strategies for optimizing the refunding of callable bonds. In contrast with then-existing strategies, which recommended that an issue be called when rates reached a certain level below the issue's coupon, Boyce and Kalotay showed that it sometimes makes sense to wait, and introduced the notion of refunding efficency to quantify the value lost when an issue is called too early.[8] Bell System companies applied these strategies and were able to save millions of dollars in financing costs. Boyce and Kalotay described their refunding strategy in their 1979 papers, "Optimum Bond Calling and Refunding",[9] which was a runner-up for the 1979 Management Science Achievement Award,[10] and "Tax Differentials and Callable Bonds."[11]

Following the Bell System breakup, Kalotay invited Boyce to join him at the investment bank Salomon Brothers.[12] Boyce developed a "matrix pricing" scheme for daily bond pricing that remains in use today,[13] and was an original member of the Yield Book fixed income analytical system team.

Boyce retired in 2003.

Publications

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c Boyce, W.; Garey, M. (1973). "Computing an Average Cost Allocation for Interrelated Operations". IEEE Transactions on Manufacturing Technology. 2 (1): 15–22. doi:10.1109/TMFT.1973.1135504. ISSN 0046-838X.
  2. ^ Boyce, William M. (1969). "Commuting Functions with No Common Fixed Point". Transactions of the American Mathematical Society. 137: 77–92. doi:10.2307/1994788. ISSN 0002-9947. JSTOR 1994788.
  3. ^ Boyce, William M. (1967). "Generation of a Class of Permutations Associated with Commuting Functions" (PDF). Mathematical Algorithms. 2: 19–26.
  4. ^ Brown, Robert F. (January 2014). "A Good Question Won't Go Away: An Example Of Mathematical Research" (PDF). American Mathematical Monthly. Retrieved 31 August 2024. Since computers only became generally available to researchers in the 1950s, this 1967 example must have been one of the first uses of a computer to solve an abstract mathematical problem.
  5. ^ Boyce, W. M. (1981). "Baxter Permutations and Functional Composition". Houston Journal of Economics. 7 (2).
  6. ^ Boyce, W. M.; Seery, J. B. "STEINER 72, an improved version of Cockayne and Schiller's program STEINER for the minimal network problem". Bell Laboratories Comp. Sci. Technical Report. 35.
  7. ^ Cockayne, E. J.; Hewgill, D. E. (June 1992). "Improved computation of plane Steiner Minimal Trees". Algorithmica. 7 (1–6): 219–229. doi:10.1007/BF01758759. ISSN 0178-4617.
  8. ^ Kalotay, Andrew J.; Yang, Deane; Fabozzi, Frank J. (May 2007). "Refunding efficiency: a generalized approach". Applied Financial Economics Letters. 3 (3): 141–146. doi:10.1080/17446540600771076. ISSN 1744-6546.
  9. ^ Boyce, W. M.; Kalotay, A. J. (1979). "Optimum Bond Calling and Refunding". Interfaces. 9 (5): 36–49. doi:10.1287/inte.9.5.36. ISSN 0092-2102. JSTOR 25059810.
  10. ^ Barry, John Y. (1979). "The Management Science Achievement Award". Interfaces. 9 (5): 1–2. ISSN 0092-2102.
  11. ^ Boyce, W. M.; Kalotay, A. J. (1979). "Tax Differentials and Callable Bonds". The Journal of Finance. 34 (4): 825–838. doi:10.2307/2327050. ISSN 0022-1082. JSTOR 2327050.
  12. ^ Kalotay, Andrew. "Let's Assume Taxes".
  13. ^ Rubio, Fernando (2005). "Valuation of Callable Bonds: The Salomon Brothers Approach". SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.897343. ISSN 1556-5068.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:William_Martin_Boyce&oldid=1274729176"