He earned his B. S. from Michigan State University, where he majored in mathematics and minored in physical sciences and foreign languages. Michigan State University also awarded him a Master of Science and a PhD for his work in graph theory in 1964. Chartrand became the first doctoral student of Edward Nordhaus, and the first doctoral student at Michigan State University to research graph theory. His dissertation was Graphs and Their Associated Line-Graphs. Chartrand worked with Frank Harary at the University of Michigan, where he spent a year as a Research Associate, and the two have published numerous papers together (along with other authors).
Other contributions that Chartrand has made involve dominating sets, distance in graphs, and graph coloring. During his career at Western Michigan University, he advised 22 doctoral students in their research on aspects of graph theory. Chartrand is currently a professor emeritus of mathematics at Western Michigan University.[2]
Books
1977: Graphs as Mathematical Models, Prindle, Weber & Schmidt, MR0490611 reprinted 1985 as Introductory Graph TheoryMR783826.
2019: (with Teresa W. Haynes, Michael A. Henning & Ping Zhang) From Domination to Coloring: Stephen Hedetniemi's Graph Theory and Beyond, SpringerBriefs in Mathematics.
2019: (with Cooroo Egan & Ping Zhang) How to Label a Graph, SpringerBriefs in Mathematics MR3932147.
2021: (with Akbar Ali & Ping Zhang) Irregularity in Graphs, SpringerBriefs in Mathematics MR4292275.