John Francis Riordan (April 22, 1903 – August 27, 1988)[1] was an American mathematician and the author of major early works in combinatorics, particularly Introduction to Combinatorial Analysis and Combinatorial Identities.
In his early life he wrote a number of poems and essays and a book of short-stories, On the Make, published in 1929, and was Editor-in-Chief of Salient and The Figure in the Carpet, literary magazines published by The New School for Social Research in New York.
[2] Riordan's long professional career was at Bell Labs, which he joined in 1926 (a year after its foundation) and where he remained, publishing over a hundred scholarly papers on combinatorial analysis, until he retired in 1968.
He then joined the faculty at Rockefeller University as professor emeritus.
[4] From the Introduction by Marc Kac to the Special Issue of the JCTA in honor of John Riordan: From an interview with Neil Sloane published by Bell Labs: