Paul Erdős regarding a certain class of irrational numbers. Ree's two most renowned papers were written from 1960 to 1961, in which he suggested a Lie type group over a finite field now named after him. In 1962 after being promoted to an assistant professor in mathematics at University of British Columbia, he was granted an academic year which he spent in Yale. He was elected a member of Royal Society of Canada in 1964. Personal life Family Ree had two daughters Erran and Hiran from his first marriage. He later married Rhoda Mah, a doctor and the daughter of John Ming Mah, who owned Northwest Food Products, a manufacturers of noodles. She would go on to work as staff physician for Canadian Pacific Airlines. Rimhak and Rhoda's first son Ronald was followed by another son Robert in December 1971. They also had a third son Richard. Ree died on January 9, 2005, in Vancouver, Canada. Statelessness Around the time Ree received his doctorate, his passport was approaching its expiration date, so he approached the to extend it, but instead the consular officer confiscated his passport and ordered him to return to South Korea. Ree refused the order, which caused him considerable difficulty, but in the end the Canadian government treated him as a de facto stateless person and granted him permanent residency in Canada. Afterwards, he continued to work at the University of British Columbia. Though Ree secured his immigration status in Canada, he continued to encounter difficulties with the South Korean government. Ree's family was divided by the Korean War, with his father, older sister, and other relatives having stayed in their hometown of Hamhung. Hamhung was the site of a munitions factory built during Japanese rule, making the city a frequent target for bombing by the United States Air Force during the Korean War, and Lee did not know if any of his relatives there had survived the war. He visited North Korea using his Canadian passport various times for academic exchanges, but he was not able to travel freely in North Korea and thus had no success in making contact with his relatives; furthermore, his visits to North Korea led South Korea's Park Chung-hee military government to place an entry ban on him. Ree requested help from Erdős, who as an internationally-famous Hungarian citizen faced fewer restrictions on travel or communication in either capitalist or communist