EPADEL:A Semisesquicentennial History, 1926-2000

Howard Anton is a native Philadelphian who received his higher education at three different institutions, receiving a B.A. at Lehigh (1960), M.A. at Illinois (1963), and Ph.D. at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (1968). Anton worked as a mathematician at Burroughs Corporation after receiving his undergraduate degree. His first academic position was at Hunter College, where he taught from 1964 to 1966. Anton came to Drexel University immediately after receiving his doctorate in 1968. He remained there until 1983, when he left to form Anton Textbooks, Inc., an enterprise spawned by his many successful textbooks.

Bing Kuen Wong was born in Shanghai, China, and received his higher education in the U.S. After receiving his A.B. at Pittsburgh State (Kansas) in 1961 he entered the graduate program at the University of Illinois, obtaining an M.A. in 1963 and a Ph.D. in 1966. His doctoral dissertation on dynamical systems was written under Waldemar Trjitzinsky. Wong held assistant professorships at two institutions before arriving at Wilkes College (now Wilkes University) in 1968 as a professor. He has remained there ever since, serving as department chair twice (1968-1984 and 1990-1992) and as the associate dean of the School of Science and Engineering from 1992 to 1996.

David Edwin Flesner was born in Indiana. He received his A.B. at Wittenberg University in 1966 before enrolling in the graduate program at the University of Michigan, where he obtained an A.M. (1968) and Ph.D. (1971). His dissertation – on maximal subgroups of four-dimensional symplectic groups in characteristic two – was written under Jack E. McLaughlin. Upon receiving his doctorate, Flesner came to Gettysburg College and has remained there ever since. He became chair of the department in 1999. His book Aging and the Aged: Problems, Opportunities, Challenges (edited with Edwin D. Freed) was published in 1980. For several years after that he directed an interdepartmental senior honors Seminar on Aging and the Aged. He also took part in a project at Maryland involving applications of group theory in chemistry and physics. In 2000, Flesner completed a toolbar package to implement the Klein model of hyperbolic geometry within the Cabri Geometry software.

Bernard Kolman was born in Havana, Cuba, and became a naturalized citizen in 1953. He received all of his higher education in the U.S., earning a B.S. summa cum laude from Brooklyn College in 1954 and an Sc. M. from Brown University two years later. From 1957 to 1964 he was a principal mathematician at the UNIVAC Division of Sperry Rand Corporation. Meanwhile he completed his doctoral studies at Penn, and received his Ph.D. in 1965 for a dissertation on the lattice of subalgebras of a Lie algebra written under Morikuni Goto. Kolman had accepted an assistant professorship at Drexel in 1964, and he remained there 34 years until his retirement in 1998, having served as department head 1971-1972. During that tenure he organized two well-known conferences in Lie algebras and edited the proceedings from them. He also directed one Ph.D. student. Kolman is the author of numerous textbooks that have been translated into several other languages.

David Ross Hill is a native of Homestead, PA, who received a B.S. degree in education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1964 and an M.A. in mathematics from the State University of New York at Buffalo two years later. He spent the year 1966-1967 as a computer analyst with Koppers Corp. in Pittsburgh before entering the graduate program at the University of Pittsburgh, where he received his Ph.D. in 1973. His dissertation on numerical solutions of delay differential equations was written under the supervision of George D. Byrne. Hill joined the faculty at Pittsburgh as an associate instructor during the last two years of graduate school. Upon receiving his doctorate he accepted an assistant professorship at Temple University, where he has been since, except for a visiting position at the College of the Virgin Islands in 1980. During his tenure he directed two masters theses. Hill has been a principal investigator on three major grants – two from the NSF (one with D. Zitarelli established linear algebra as a lab course in 1990) and one from FIPSE (to produce an interactive text for linear algebra with G. Porter). In 1988 Hill presented a mini-course on MATLAB at the AMS¹ summer meeting in Providence, R.I, and in 1995 he delivered a one-hour invited address at the annual MAA meeting on teaching linear algebra with technology. In addition to talks at the EPADEL spring meetings in 1986 and 1995, he has been an invited lecturer in Holland, England, and the Czech Republic. He also taught a short course at Messiah College sponsored by EPADEL in 1990. His expertise in teaching with computers led him to conduct numerous workshops – at the Northeastern Section of the MAA in 1994, the MAA MathFest in Seattle in 1996, and the NSF-sponsored ATLAST Project from 1992 through 1996. Hill is the author of several successful textbooks, including three with Bernard Kolman. In addition, he was the recipient of a Distinguished Teaching Award at Temple in 1996.

Nancy Lineken Hagelgans was born in Burlington, Vermont. She received an A.B. from Goucher College in 1956 before entering the graduate program at Johns Hopkins, earning an M.A. three years later. Hagelgans taught at two Baltimore institutions (Goucher 1967-1968 and Towson State 1967- 1972) before moving to the EPADEL area. While teaching at Haverford from 1975 to 1977 she decided to complete her doctorate at Hopkins. Her supervisor, Jean-Pierre Meyer, suggested that James Stasheff of Temple might act as her advisor. He did, and Hagelgans completed her dissertation on local spaces with three cells as H-spaces in 1977. She spent 1977-1978 at Bryn Mawr, all the while searching for a tenure-track position. Since it seemed that the only openings involved computer science she completed an M.S. in that field at Villanova in 1979. In 1978 Hagelgans landed a tenure- track position at Ursinus in both mathematics and computer science. She has remained there ever since, except for the year 1986-1987 spent as a visiting professor at the University of Delaware. She served as the department chair at Ursinus 1988-1992 and resumed that post in January 2001. Hagelgans was elected to a three-year term on the EPADEL Executive Committee in 1986, when she also began coordinating the Consultants and Speakers Program. In addition to four years as president and vice president, she was elected to a three-year term as governor 1995-1998. She also was an invited speaker at the section’s spring meeting in 1996 on one of her specialties, cooperative learning in discrete mathematics. Along this line, she is one of the authors of the book A Practical Guide to Cooperative Learning in Collegiate Mathematics, published in 1995 as MAA Notes Number 37. Hagelgans has been active in the national MAA in many other ways – serving on the Committee on Consultants (1997-1999), the task force on the MAA publication Guidelines for Programs and Departments in Undergraduate Mathematical Sciences (1997-2000), the Professional Development Committee (1998-2001), and the Committee on Sections (1999-2002). She has also been involved in Project NexT as a mentor since 1995, as a workshop presenter in 1996, and as a panelist in 1998 and 1999.

Walter Rees Stromquist possesses very strong mathematical genes. His father, Walter Kellogg Stromquist (1917-1999), was a nuclear engineer with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Tennessee. WKS worked at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory when his son WRS was born. WKS’s uncle, Carl Eben Stromquist (1877-1925), received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale in 1903 and was on the faculty at Princeton 1903-1909. CES then moved to the University of Wyoming, where he remained until ill health forced him to resign in 1922. During this time he was a charter member of the MAA in 1915 and one of the organizing members of the Rocky Mountain Section of the MAA two years later. EPADEL chair Walter Rees Stromquist received his B.A. from the University of Kansas in 1970 before enrolling in the graduate program at Harvard, where he earned two degrees – an M.A. in 1972 and a Ph.D. in 1975. His dissertation on the four-color problem was written under the supervision of Andrew Gleason. Stromquist did not restrict himself to mathematics during his stay at Harvard, however, electing graduate courses in economics and tax law. Thus it is not particularly surprising that his first professional experience was with the Office of Tax Analysis in the U.S. Treasury, where he worked 1973-1977. In 1979 Stromquist accepted a position with Daniel H. Wagner, Associates, ultimately rising to become vice president of the company before leaving in 1998 to become an independent consultant. During his tenure he was a visiting professor at Temple 1987-1988; he also taught as an adjunct professor at Bryn Mawr, Eastern College (in economics), George Washington, and West Point (as an Army reservist). Stromquist served as a member of the section’s Executive Committee 1987-1991 before being elected to stints as vice president and president. At the national level, Stromquist was elected MAA Governor at Large for Industry and Government in 2000 and served as an associate editor of the Monthly \(1996-2001\text{.}\)

Louise McNertney Berard is a native of Hazleton, PA. She received her bachelors degree from King’s College in 1975 and her Ph.D. from Brown University five years later. Her dissertation, “One-Parameter Families of Surfaces with Constant Curvature in Lorentz \(3\)-Space”, was the second one written under the supervision of MAA president Thomas F. Banchoff. Berard accepted a position at Wilkes University upon receiving her doctorate. She has remained there ever since, serving as chair 1992-1996. She received the Carpenter Outstanding Teacher Award at Wilkes in 1988. In addition to being elected president and vice president of EPADEL for two years each, Berard served as the coordinator of the section’s Visiting Lecturer and Consultant Program 1992-1995.

Kay Bergstresser Somers is a native of Fountain Hill, PA. After receiving her bachelors degree from Ursinus in 1968 she worked for a year as a statistical research analyst with the NY State Department of Mental Hygiene. Then she enrolled in the graduate program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, earning a masters degree in 1971 and a Ph.D. two years later. Her dissertation, “A generalization of strong unicity”, was written under the supervision of Harry McLaughlin. Kay Somers then was a visiting lecturer at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University before accepting an assistant professorship at Lafayette in 1975. She left there in 1979 to work as an operations research analyst with Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. Somers moved to Moravian College in 1981 and has remained there ever since, serving as chair 1992-1998. In addition to being elected president and vice president of EPADEL, she also served as secretary-treasurer for six years. In addition, she was an invited speaker at annual meeting of the Michigan Section of the MAA in 1994. At the national level, Somers was a member of the MAA Ad Hoc Committee to review the Monthly in \(1999\text{.}\) Two of her students have won MAA student paper contests.

Douglas Edward Ensley was born in Phenix City, Alabama. After earning a B.S. degree from the University of Alabama at Huntsville in 1986, Ensley moved north to enroll in the graduate program at Carnegie Mellon University. He received an M.S. degree two years later and a Ph.D. in 1993 for a dissertation on measures on categorical structures written under the supervision of Michael Albert. Upon receiving his degree, Ensley moved to Shippensburg, where he became a 1993 project NExT fellow. He served as assistant chair at Shippensburg 1995-1999. Summers found him back in Pittsburgh, however, as the mathematics instructor for the Pennsylvania Governor’s School of the Sciences (PGSS) held at Carnegie Mellon. His contributions were recognized by the PGSS with an Exemplary Service Award in 1996. In addition to serving EPADEL as president and vice president, Ensley volunteered in two other capacities, coordinating the Visiting Lecturer and Consultant Program 1995-1999 and directing (with Joanne Darken) Project NExT 2000-2001. In his short career Ensley has also been active with the MAA, serving as a Visiting Mathematician during the fall of 2000. This led to his being appointed editor of the MAA Digital Classroom Resources, a part of the Mathematical Sciences Digital Library. Winning a graduate student teaching award at Carnegie Mellon in 1993 foreshadowed successful teaching at Shippensburg, as three of his students have won MAA awards for student paper presentations at two different Mathfests.

Annalisa Crannell was born to be an academic, having been delivered to a pair of graduate students in physics at the Stanford University Hospital in Palo Alto, California. She crossed the country to take her undergraduate education in the EPADEL area, earning a bachelors degree Magna Cum Laude with honors in mathematics from Bryn Mawr at age 20 in 1986. From there Crannell traveled further east to enroll in the graduate program at Brown, where she received a masters degree three years later and a Ph.D. in 1992. Her doctoral dissertation, “The existence of many periodic, nontraveling solutions to the Boussinesq equation”, was written under the supervision of Walter Craig. Crannell went directly to Franklin and Marshall upon receiving her degree and has remained there since then. She will chair the department beginning in 2001. Crannell engaged in professional activities soon after reaching F & M by serving on three national committees – the Joint Committee on Employment Opportunities (1992- 1995), the AMS² Committee on the Profession (1995-2000), and the AMS³ Short Course Committee (beginning in 2000). In addition she wrote articles, edited a video, and organized panels about finding jobs in mathematics in a tight market. Crannell was elected vice president of EPADEL for 1999- 2001. Starting in 2001 she will become an Associate Editor of Mathematics Magazine and an editor of MAA Notes series.

James Oliver Brooks was born in Evanston, Illinois. After obtaining his A.B. from Oberlin College in 1952 he entered the graduate program at the University of Michigan, receiving an M.A. the following year and a Ph.D. in 1964. His dissertation on the theory of representation of modules was written under Donald Higman. While completing his graduate studies, Brooks accepted an assistant professorship at Haverford College, which he held from 1959 until 1964. He then moved to nearby Villanova University, where he taught until 1993. Brooks served the department as acting chair for one year, followed by an eight-year stint as chair, 1969-1977. He served on the section’s Executive Committee 1971-1973, and was elected secretary- treasurer 1982-1989.

Clifford Henry Wagner was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received three degrees from three different institutions – an A.B. from Cincinnati in 1967, an A.M. from Michigan in 1968, and a Ph.D. from SUNY - Albany in 1973. His dissertation, “Symmetric, cyclic, and permutation products of manifolds”, was written under E. S. Thomas, Jr. Upon graduation Wagner accepted an assistant professorship at Fitchburg State College (MA), where he remained until moving to Penn State - Harrisburg in 1978. In addition to serving EPADEL as secretary-treasurer for six years, Wagner was elected to the Executive Committee 1993-1995. Beyond that, he has helped organize MATHCOUNTS competitions in the Capital Region since 1989. Wagner was presented with the MAA’s Allendoerfer Award in recognition of an article that appeared in the November 1982 issue of Mathematics Magazine. He also wrote (with Martin Barrett) the textbook C and UNIX: Tools for Software Design.

Lewis Carl Leinbach is a native of Palmerton, PA, who received his B.A. at Lafayette College in 1962 and an M.S. two years later from the University of Delaware. He then went west for graduate school, earning his Ph.D. in 1967 at the University of Oregon. His dissertation on order properties in Banach algebras was written under Bertram Yood. Carl Leinbach returned to the EPADEL area immediately upon receiving his degree, accepting a position at Gettysburg College. He was a member of the mathematics department at Gettysburg until 2000, when he joined the college’s new computer science department. Leinbach has been one of the most active members of EPADEL over the past 30 years. In addition to serving as governor, he was elected to the Executive Committee, was the SIG chair, and taught EPADEL-sponsored workshops at Messiah College in 1990 and 1996. At the national level, he was a member of the MAA Classroom Resources Committee, the associate editor for software reviews in the College Mathematics Journal, and the editor of an MAA Notes volume on “Calculus as a Laboratory Course”. As a result of these activities, Leinbach was awarded the 2001 MAA Certificate for Meritorious Service for work done in 2000.

Dennis Michael DeTurck is a native Philadelphian who took all of his degrees in the city. Before receiving his bachelors degree from Drexel in 1976 he was awarded the munificent sum of $12 from the section for achieving the highest score on the Putnam exam of any undergraduate within its boundaries. DeTurck then entered the graduate program at Penn, earning a masters degree in 1978 and a Ph.D. two years later. In his dissertation, written under Jerry L. Kazdan, DeTurck constructed a local theory for metrics having prescribed Ricci tensors. Following graduation he went to the Courant Institute as a post-doctoral instructor for two years. He returned to Penn after that and has remained there since 1982. DeTurck was promoted to full professor in 1989. He was the 1991 winner of the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching; four years later he was appointed to the Davidson Kennedy Professorship as a reward for successful undergraduate teaching. (One of Penn’s undergraduate students won the 2001 EPADEL Undergraduate Research Award.) DeTurck served as undergraduate chair of the department 1992-1997 and was elected chair in 1997. During his tenure he has directed six doctoral and two masters dissertations. DeTurck was an associate editor of the Monthly for ten years, \(1986-1996\text{.}\) During that time he was elected to the EPADEL Executive Committee for two three-year terms. Finally, DeTurck won the section’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2001.

Hanson Matthew Umoh came to the U.S. in 1970 from his native Nigeria, where he studied at the Federal School and Science in Lagos. Umoh earned a B.S. degree in mathematics from Virginia Union and an M.A. in mathematics from Morgan State. He accepted an instructorship at Howard University in 1981. While teaching he also took graduate courses there, resulting in a Ph.D. in 1988; he had been promoted to assistant professor the previous year. However, upon graduation he accepted an assistant professorship at Delaware State University, where he has remained ever since.