George E. Collins (January 10, 1928 in Stuart, Iowa – November 21, 2017 in Madison, Wisconsin) was an American mathematician and computer scientist. He is the inventor of garbage collection by reference counting and of the method of quantifier elimination by cylindrical algebraic decomposition. He received his PhD from Cornell University in 1955. He worked at IBM, the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1966–1986) Ohio State University, RISC-Linz, Delaware University, and North Carolina State University. Selected publications References 1928 births 2017 deaths People from Stuart, Iowa 20th-century American mathematicians American computer scientists 21st-century American mathematicians