Robert Plemmons

Robert James Plemmons (December 18, 1938 – February 6, 2026) was an American mathematician who specialized in computational mathematics. He was the emeritus Z. Smith Reynolds Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Wake Forest University. In 1979, Plemmons co-authored the book Nonnegative Matrices in the Mathematical Sciences.

Early life and education Plemmons was born on December 18, 1938, in the small town of Old Fort, North Carolina, and grew up in rural Appalachia.

He attended Wake Forest University (WFU) on a full baseball scholarship. Former athletic director Gene Hooks was his baseball coach. In 1959, he held the record for earned run average. During the years 1959–61, he held the record for victories, innings pitched, strikeouts, and complete games, and made All-Conference Pitcher all three years. Plemmons graduated from Wake Forest in 1961 with a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics. He played with the Tri-City Atoms, Aberdeen Pheasants, and Elmira Pioneers.

In December 1963, he married Mary Jo Harris, also from Old Fort and a graduate of Old Fort High School. Plemmons joined the faculty of Wake Forest University in 1990. but still conducted research at WFU. He was also the professor and mentor of former NBA and WFU basketball player Rusty LaRue.

Academic work Plemmons focused his work on applied computational mathematics. He continued this research until the early 1980s at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. In 1979, he co-authored the book Nonnegative Matrices in the Mathematical Sciences along with Abraham Berman. In 1994, it was revised and republished by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).

In the mid-to-late 1980s until mid-1990s, his research focused on numerical linear algebra, specifically in Matrix Theory with applications in Markov chains and nonnegative matrices. Plemmons has been recognized internationally for his significant contributions to the field, celebrated at the Linear Algebra: Theory, Applications, and Computations Conference held at Wake Forest University in 1999 in honor of Plemmons' 60th birthday,

Plemmons conducted research in imaging physics and applied optics at Wake Forest from the late 1990s. He focused initially in biometrics, including iris recognition. His later research was in space situational awareness, tracking space debris using optical methods to prevent damage to space assets.

In 1996, Plemmons delivered a congressional testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on National Security, in support of appropriations to the Department of Defense on behalf of the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics, including the American Mathematical Society and SIAM. Among his peers, he was a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

He was the author of more than 250 publications on computational mathematics,

Books Nonnegative Matrices in the Mathematical Sciences (1979), Academic Press, Scientific Computing: Proceedings of the Workshop, 1997, Hong Kong (1997), edited with Gene H. Golub, Lui Shui-Hong, and T. Luk Franklin, Springer Science and Business Media, Linear Algebra, Markov Chains, and Queueing Models (2012), edited with Carl D. Meyer, Springer Science and Business Media,