From: rusin@vesuvius.math.niu.edu (Dave Rusin)
Subject: Re: Birkhoff and the chromatic polynomial
Date: 8 May 2000 07:27:18 GMT
Newsgroups: sci.math
Summary:  Birkhoff-Lewis reduction algorithm?

In article <8eihq3$a03$1@campus3.mtu.edu>,
Matthew Hyde  <mdoughy@mtu.edu> wrote:
>Does anyone know where I can find an on-line proof of the Birkhoff-Lewis
>reduction algorithm? any help would be swell.

Never heard of this myself, and a check of MathSciNet found only three
references to "Birkhoff and Lewis and reduction*", one of them useless,
another presumably of real interest to you:
   8,284f 56.0X
   Birkhoff, G. D.; Lewis, D. C.
   Chromatic polynomials. 
   Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 60, (1946). 355--451. 

You asked for an online reference, and may be in luck if your university
has entered into enough library consortia. THere is a new project
under way called  JSTOR  which is digitizing select journals cover to
cover (as a set of GIF images, one per page). TAMS is one of the 
covered journals, and indeed is one of just three journals offered
as a free demo _but only the articles to 192 are free_.

If your university subscribes to JSTOR, you should be able to read
the above article by starting at:
    http://www.jstor.org/journals/00029947.html

I don't know about "swell", but I always thought JSTOR was peachy keen.

dave