Tom Concannon's Home Page

I'm currently a part-time mathematics graduate student. I'm going at it rather slowly, taking one course per semester. That translates to about 5 years for a Masters, which is the program I'm in right now.  Why, you may ask, did I choose such a tortuous route? See below!

By day, I work full time as a software applications engineer for a local EDA (electronic design automation) company, so my time is limited to take courses. The software that EDA companies use are extremely complex, requiring millions upon millions lines of code, and can cost up to a cool $10^6 per license. No kidding! Though I support a few of these products, I have yet to figure out how they really work, but this comes pretty darn close.

But, by night, I like to do math and physics for fun. Really.

Well, probably. But, on the other hand, I do have some experience doing professional mathematical physics...

I have a B.S. in physics and a B.S. in mathematics from Penn State, and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where I worked for Jimmy York on black hole thermodynamics.

I also had a stint for one year as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Physics at Wake Forest University, and a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Physics the next year at Elon College (now Elon University). I've taught both semesters of calculus-based and algrebra-based introductory physics, two semesters of classical mechanics, electromagnetism I and II, and introductory astronomy.

But I have always been extremely interested in mathematics, especially differential geometry, topology and some of the more pure branches, like number theory. I just keep going, like this dude does: