Some of the events that have taken place during the past year include a second Career Night and subsequent formation of a Mathematics Alumni Advisory Council, a series of lectures by Benoit Mandelbrot, a big banquet at Harvard honoring C.C. Hsiung, increased cooperation with the engineering college in our calculus courses, and new courses in Combinatorics and Financial Mathematics. Each of these, and others too, will be described in more detail in this newsletter.
I am finishing my first 3-year term as chairman, and expect to serve a second term. It has been a difficult period in that the university budget is extremely tight. This has been caused primarily by increased financial aid and shortfalls in graduate tuition income, mainly in the colleges of engineering and education.
The address of the department's website has been changed to http://www.lehigh.edu/~math. You can read updated accounts of our activities there. Please feel free to contact me at dmd1@lehigh.edu, (610) 758-3756, or by mail at the Math Department, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015. Don Davis
The alumni who served on the panel this time were Art Brody, '66, Information Systems Group; Bob Colonna, '62, Innovative Systems, Inc.; Gerry Grube, '67, AT&T; Roy Keller, '85, Smith Barney; Mary Jo Lewis, '88, National Bureau of Medical Examiners; Mary Olenick, '95, Guardian Ins.; Francesca Turner, '94, Innovative Systems, Inc. Both of our Career Nights have been viewed as very interesting and helpful, by both student and alumni participants.
After the Career Night, Art Brody suggested the formation of a Mathematics Alumni Advisory Council. Such a council has been formed. It is still evolving. At present the council operates as follows: 1. The council, Lehigh mathematics majors, and Lehigh mathematics faculty engage in an electronic discussion group. 2. A website, http://www.lehigh.edu/~math/council.html, includes an archive of messages posted to this discussion group, names and addresses of council members, and links to other websites relevant to the concern of the council, which is preparation of Lehigh mathematics majors for future employment. 3. The council will form the mainstays of on-campus discussions of career opportunities. This can include annual Career Nights, such as the two held in 1996, and also less formal events. 4. The council is available to students for individual advice. 5. The council can suggest topics for meetings relevant to the concern of the council, and can make suggestions to Lehigh students and faculty about what employers are looking for.
Current council members are Brody (now with KPMG Peat Marwick), Colonna, Grube, Keller, Lewis, and Turner, plus five alumni who spoke at the first Career Night and one alum (William Brichta, '76) who works in telecommunications at Lehigh. The five are Diane Duda, '80, CIGNA Insurance; Matt Fante, '93, MS '95; John Francisco, '82, AT&T; Richard Gibbs, '68, TIAA-CREF; and Bruce Knoll, '73, Fuller Co.
So far, the discussion group has not been very active. The way that it works is that messages are sent by e-mail to dmd1@lehigh.edu, and Don Davis then forwards them to the alumni, students, and faculty. Additional alumni who would like to join the council can do so by contacting Davis. The only prerequisites are a Lehigh math degree, access to e-mail, and a desire to help our current students.
The title of Mandelbrot's series of lectures was "Fractals in Mathematics and the Sciences." The titles of the three individual lectures were "Open mathematical questions inspired by pictures of fractals," "Fractals' roles in the theories of chaos and disordered matter," and "Fractals and scaling in finance: discontinuity, concentration and risk." As with most of the previous Pitcher lecture series, the lectures were videotaped and can be viewed at Lehigh's Media Center.
The next Pitcher lectures will take place during 1997-1998 academic year. The speaker will be Cathleen Morawetz, of the NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Morawetz recently served as president of the American Mathematical Society. The date and title of her lectures will be available on our web page when they are finalized.
The tenth annual Geometry/Topology Conference will be held at Lehigh June 19-21, 1997. The principal speakers are Steve Ferry, SUNY Binghamton, Geometry, controlled topology, and strange spaces; Peter Gilkey, University of Oregon, Invariant metrics of positive Ricci curvature on principal bundles; Robert Gompf, University of Texas, On the topology of Stein surfaces; Blaine Lawson, SUNY Stony Brook, Curvature, singularities, and Morse theory; Mark Mahowald, Northwestern University, Curves of higher genus and homotopy theory; Jon Wolfson, Michigan State University, On a variational problem in symplectic geometry. For more information, see our website, or contact David Johnson at dlj0@lehigh.edu.
Penny Smith is now teaching a 400-level course in Wavelets for the second time. The wavelet transform is a new method of frequency analysis of functions which has had many recent applications. In Fall semester 1997, Vladimir Dobric will teach a new 400-level course in Financial Mathematics. This course, which should attract students from the business college and local brokerage houses, as well as our own graduate students, covers the basic mathematical concepts behind derivative pricing and portfolio management of derivative securities. The mathematical prerequisites, at least for this first semester, are calculus and rudimentary linear algebra and probability.
We have also prepared a proposal for a new M.S. program in Statistics, which awaits approval by various university committees. At the present, we offer a B.S. in Statistics, but the M.S. and PhD programs for students studying statistics have carried the title of Mathematics.
Our use of the computer algebra system Maple in our calculus courses has been successful enough that the Engineering College relies on us to teach it, having dropped a less powerful computer algebra system from their Engineering I course. Although many students seem unhappy about the necessity of learning this computer language as part of their calculus course, they are generally thankful to know it for their upperclass science, math, and engineering courses.
We are embarking on a new era of cooperation with the Engineering College in our calculus courses. Bill Schiesser, Professor of Chemical Engineering, will teach one section of Math 21 in Fall 1997 and will also lead a coordination of Math 21 with Physics 11 and Engineering I. Mathematics professor Susan Szczepanski is enthusiastic about incorporating some real engineering applications into the Math 21 course which she will head.
During the past two years our Honors Calculus sequence has changed from a course that was merely accelerated to one that is not accelerated, but rather contains more depth and rigor. This course, which gives freshmen close contact with senior professors, seems to be successful in attracting some talented math majors.
The Thornburg Award for outstanding performance in advanced mathematics courses was won in 1996 by statistics major Jim Gannon and in 1997 by Sam Donnelly. Gannon is now working as an actuary. Donnelly intends to go to graduate school in Artificial Intelligence at University of Georgia. Donnelly will also become the first mathematics major to graduate with Honors in many years. The rejuvenated honors program requires the writing and presenting of an honors thesis. Donnelly worked with Professor Garth Isaak in graph theory, with a thesis entitled "Powers of Hamiltonian paths in threshold graphs."
In fall 1996, the Faculty Award, which goes to the outstanding junior mathematics major, was won by Ronnie Brandes. A new round of donations by generous faculty revitalized this award for quite a few more years. Brandes hopes to go to law school, and feels that mathematics offers excellent preparation for that.
Two PhD students of Joe Yukich, Kate McGivney and Kuntal McElroy, should finish their PhDs this year. Their thesis topics are, respectively, "Probabilistic limit theorems for combinatorial optimization problems" and "Stochastic analysis of Euclidean functionals." McGivney has accepted a 3-year position at University of Arizona, while McElroy accepted a position at Price-Waterhouse in New York. Also expecting to finish this year is Theresa Friedman. Her thesis, under the direction of Drew Snyder, is entitled "Relating embedding properties with certain operator-theoretic properties." She has accepted a tenure-track position at Benedictine University in Illinois. Finally, Vitaly Zelov should finish a PhD this year under the direction of Don Davis. The title of his thesis will be "Immersions and embeddings of real projective spaces." He will stay on at Lehigh to obtain a graduate degree in computer science.
The Reidler Foundation, from Hazleton, Pennsylvania, has been helpful in this regard. They have presented a cash gift to the math department each year since 1984. This has usually been used for summer research support for junior faculty. In 1996, both of our Assistant Professors had research grants (NSF and ONR), and so the Reidler grant was used primarily to purchase new computers for faculty offices and new overhead projectors.
In 1995, Ann Fegan, who administers the Reidler Foundation, moved with her family from Hazleton to Bethlehem. Her husband, Howard Fegan, had resigned a mathematics faculty position at University of New Mexico, where he was doing excellent work in differential geometry. Howard has been serving as Adjunct Professor in our department for two years now, teaching one course each semester and adding greatly to the life of the department.
Alumni who might wish to support the activities of the math department may send a check to the Development Office at Lehigh University, with the gift designated as being for the Department of Mathematics. Development office officials have suggested that such gifts be in addition to one's usual unrestricted gift.
In 1995 Don Davis established a listserve (computer discussion group) for the international community of algebraic topologists. There are 267 subscribers from 26 countries. Some of the most common services provided are abstracts of papers and links to the papers themselves, announcements and details of conferences, and a forum for questions in algebraic topology. An archive of this listserve is at http://www.lehigh.edu/~dmd1/algtop.html.
Vladimir Dobric has been very active in the probability seminar scene at Columbia and Rutgers Universities. He gave four lectures at Columbia in 1996 on Classical Isoperimetric Inequalities, and with Professor Gundy of Rutgers has organized an ongoing Lehigh-Rutgers Probability Seminar, which is attended by many faculty and graduate students.
Bennett Eisenberg was invited to University of Osnabruck, Germany, in December 1996, where he lectured on "The probability of a tie for first place as the number of players increases," and "Random triangles in n dimensions."
Kumar Ghosh was invited to the International Conference on Nonlinear Mathematics in Athens, Greece, in July 1996, and spoke on "Best linear unbiased estimation under sequential sampling," while Lee Stanley spoke on "Consistency Results in Partition Calculus," at Oberwolfach, Germany, in January 1996, and on "Consistent Negative Partition Relations" in Luminy, France, in September 1996. Professors Stengle and Yukich have also spoken recently at the math conference center in Oberwolfach.
Garth Isaak was the principal organizer of a Project Kaleidoscope Conference on innovations in science education held at Lehigh in February 1997. This conference was attended by about 50 science educators, including five professors and four graduate students from our math department.
During spring semester 1996, Jerry King gave a seminar course to the College of Arts and Sciences college scholar students, in which he examined the notions of "Truth" and "Beauty" and the role of aesthetics in art and science. Jerry's wife, Jane, now leads the mathematics education effort at Lehigh's Learning Center, a position held the previous 15 years by Ted Hailperin.
Cliff Queen gave an invited lecture at the Seaway Number Theory Conference in Buffalo, New York, in May 1996. Cliff is organizing the 1997 version of the conference at Lehigh.
Eric Salathe received a grant from the Lehigh Valley Hospital for a biomechanical analysis of stress in dental implants. He is also working with the Mayo Clinic and Podiatric Medical College of Philadelphia on the biomechanics of the foot.
Gil Stengle wrote two papers with his former (1975) PhD student, Jim McEnerny, who is Director of Computing at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. The titles of the papers were "The nonreduced order spectrum of a commutative ring" and "Convex polarities over ordered fields."
Joe Yukich received a renewal of his grant, Geometric and Combinatorial Probability, from the National Security Agency for the period 1997-9. He was also named an Associate Editor of the Annals of Applied Probability, and had a book-length research monograph, \lt Limit Theorems for Optimaization Problems," accepted by the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Mathematics series.
Frederick Townsend, '58
"Since graduation (as a major in Actuarial Science, since discontinued, as I was the only student in some of my classes), I have been employed as (1) the chief actuary of a life insurance company, (2) a partner in a member firm of the New York Stock Exchange, (3) co-owner of a company which performs both quantitative and qualitative credit analysis of life insurance companies, and (4) author a monthly column in a national trade journal."
Martin Schaffer, '59
"I hammered my way through Lehigh's curricula, starting off in EE (eyes bigger than my stomach) and settled for a liberal arts degree. Picked up the math and English majors along the way.
"Like all peripatetics, I have a varied background: worked fulltime at Bethlehem Steel while at South Mountain, married with wife and children, took time off for the Korean War, etc. And was loaded with school debt when I graduated LU. So got a second job, teaching---math of course, some English, mostly the sciences. All the while at Bethlehem Steel down the hill.
"When working all this time, was an hourly paid electrician in the plant. Upon quitting that second job once my school debts were paid, management, who had been monitoring me I guess, made offer to put me on salary.
"At the time (1965) the Bethlehem Plant was ordered by higher authority to get a plant electrical school 'pilot program' going. My supervisors told me that a survey had been done of the entire corporation, seeking one with the peculiar quals--long time plant employee and I had the degree they liked. In fact by now I also had a Temple U degree.
"Certainly math had something to do with my career at Bethlehem Steel. But when I worked my way through all that engineering mathematics I never knew just how that discipline might help me. Guess I liked arithmetic."
John Heiss, '60
"Although I majored in math at Lehigh, my passion was always music, and I went on in that direction, with an MFA from Princeton and other work at Juilliard and Columbia (mainly in composition and flute). For the past 30 years, I have been teaching at the New England Conservatory in Boston. I direct the NEC Contemporary Ensemble in addition to teaching some theory, history, composition, flute and chamber music. It is a fine school and I love my work.
"I've been on the visiting committee for Lehigh's first-class music department and have enjoyed seeing how well everyone is thriving, especially now that the Arts Center is becoming a reality."
Harry McNally, '60
is a consultant in Fanwood, NJ. "I've been using high school level math to help me keep my career going over the past few year difficult period. I've considered teaching high school again (after student teaching at Lehigh and a few months full time temp between job changes 25 years ago) but high school math proficiency exam has some new things."
Bob Colonna, '61
"After Lehigh, I studied operations research and management science, obtaining a masters degree from the Wharton School. My work in the military, where I served for two years, required the application of quantitative techniques to military problems. My early work involved building mathematical models of consumer behavior for consumer product companies. I formed my own company, Innovative Systems, in 1968 and have been at it ever since. Our work involves the recognition of words and word patterns. The technology is used to link names and addresses together, even if all the data fields are misspelled---regardless of natural language. Today we have clients in 18 countries, offices in Pittsburgh and London, and 130 staff. We have one other Lehigh mathematics graduate here (see Francesca Turner below) along with mathematics graduates from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon.
"We welcome all applications for employment. No experience in computer science is necessary. We find that we can train math majors very quickly."
Fritz Hartmann, BA '62, PhD '68
"I am at Villanova as mathematics professor. I am still in contact often with Judy, J.P. King, and Drew Snyder."
Larry Walker, '63
He feels that most students of mathematics are unaware that they have choices of working (a) as a mathematician, (b) in management, (c) in sales, and (d) as a programmer. He feels "This lack of awareness is unfortunate because it limits the student's ability to augment their education in particular directions to become even more qualified to fill a position in one of the given areas which is closest to their interests."
"I have always been very satisfied that my Lehigh education prepared me very well to perform in the work place. Part of this is attributed to Lehigh's emphasis on engineering and application as opposed to theory and conjecture.
"My personal career has spanned successful programming, design, and management with a large computer industry company to currently heading up two companies on my own (with many lessons learned from each of those very different tracks!)."
Art Brody, '66
(written in fall, 1995)
"I am currently the President of a company that I started a year ago. The Information Systems Group is an information technology and management company that focuses on delivering custom software solutions for customers, and helping organizations with their software engineering process improvement initiatives. We do other things as well, but that's the one-minute marketing speech.
"I have been working in the computer industry since graduation, starting first with The Boeing Company working on the software portion of the Saturn-V program in Huntsville, Alabama ... moving to Washington DC and working for a number of companies until I was most recently the Vice President of Information Technology for an 80-person division of a mid-size company in Columbia, Md ... and last year leaving the security of an employer-based job to start my own company."
(written in January 1997)
"A wonderful opportunity was put in front of me in December, and I made the decision to transition my company activities (The Information Systems Group) to other individuals, and take a senior position with KPMG Peat Marwick in Baltimore. I will be focusing on the World-Class IT and Year 2000 practice areas for the firm."
Raymond Biondi, '69
"I am currently working as an Actuary for Liberty Mutual Group in Boston. My Lehigh mathematics education provided me a sound foundation for my journey through the actuarial exams and my subsequent career."
Jim Stanard, '71
"After graduation, I held jobs with INA Reinsurance, Chubb, and Prudential Reinsurance, where I became a fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society in 1977. I then began a PhD program in finance at NYU, which I finished in 1986. In the meantime, in 1983 I was cofounder of a new reinsurance subsidiary for USF&G called F&G Re. In 1990 I moved to the parent as Executive Vice President of underwriting and claims. In 1993 I left to found RenaissanceRe Holdings, a Bermuda-based specialist in property catastrophe reinsurance (traded on NASDAQ), where I am currently Chairman, President, and CEO.
"At Renaissance we have developed a unique approach to risk selection that combines the most advanced models of natural catastrophe probabilities with financial portfolio theory. My actuarial and finance training is directly applicable to my business, and my undergraduate training in mathematical rigor was the best possible foundation for this.
"Looking back on my career, I have three observations for current students. 1. My number one criterion for choosing jobs was who my boss was, and how much I could learn from that person. I have been very fortunate in having three outstanding people as mentors during my career--but I made some of my own luck by seeking them out. 2. I have tried to maintain a balance between academia and the business world, keeping one foot in each area. 3. At Lehigh I did lots and lots of proofs which showed me that you do not really understand something unless you derive it."
Tom Potts, '72
"After graduation, I obtained a Lehigh MBA during the evenings, graduating in 1975. From the outset, I was and still remain employed in the tumultuous information systems field, both defining business problems and developing software solutions. Sine the early '90s, I have worked mainly on the IBM AS/400, which with its built-in relational database and ease-of-use functionality, is probably one of the finest business computers ever constructed. My closest exposure to mathematics occurs when presented with issues of database normalization, where a background in relational algebra can be beneficial."
Chris Haynes, '73
"My central interest at Lehigh was computer science, but as there was not a CS major at that time, my major was math. The math training has proved very useful, and the minimal math degree distribution requirements allowed me to take all the CS-related courses offered at Lehigh in the early 70s. After three wonderful post-BA years as a programmer and research assistant with Maharishi European Research University in Europe and a year of similar work at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa, I went to graduate school at the nearby University of Iowa. With my PhD in Computer Science completed in 1982, I joined the faculty of the Indiana University CS Department, where I now serve as Associate Chair for Education."
John Feaver, '74
"I graduated Lehigh with a BA in Mathematics in 1974. By then, I had already taken quite an interest in the emerging Computer Science specialty, and took just about every course offered in the math department, as well as the EE department. Those were the days of paper-punch TTYs and overnight hard disk storage only for graduate students. I went on to earn an MS in Computer Science from Rutgers University, and from there went to a NJ-based company variously known as Interdata, Perkin-Elmer, and now Concurrent Computer Corporation. In 1986, I left Concurrent to join AT&T Bell Laboratories, where I am still employed (last I checked!). My area of specialty has been communications software.
"Although I did not pursue a classically pure mathematics career, I feel I benefited from the training in rigorous, disciplined thinking I received at Lehigh in general, but particularly in the Mathematics department. While surrounded by engineers in my undergraduate days, I never realized I would one day be one (albeit with a software orientation), helping to determine capacities of message handling switches, throughputs of fax engines, and the like.
"One phrase that sticks in my memory of my Lehigh math training is the term 'elegant', as in 'elegant proof.' It has inspired me to look for solutions to the technical problems I face that are not merely achieved by hacking through the jungle of obstacles, but which soar apparently effortlessly over those obstacles to venture into the realm of aesthetic beauty."
Robert Wyrough, '76
"I graduated from Lehigh in 1976 and from Chubb Institute for Computer Technology (Short Hills, NJ) in 1977. ... I am currently employed by AT&T as a Computer Programmer, a position which I have held for about ten years. Mathematics courses completed at Lehigh, particularly in Logic, certainly have been beneficial to me; despite the fact that courses such as Calculus and Algebra have no direct application to the business environment in which I work, I believe the analytical process of deriving a solution to a problem is ever-important. That is why I highly value my Lehigh education and Mathematics major."
Bob Haimowitz, '78
has been working for IBM since graduating.
Ken Goldberg, '81 "I was the first student to graduate from Lehigh with a BS in statistics. Since then I have been working in Preclinical Statistics (also known as Research Statistics, and currently Biometrics Research) at Wyeth. My current title is Research Statistician. I got my PhD at Temple in 1991. My speciality was robust statistics. I published one article in Technometrics and should publish two more just based on my dissertation.
"I have always credited Lehigh for giving me a strong mathematical statistics background and also a rounded applied statistics education. The curriculum I took at Temple was generally more applied."
Tal Avitzur, '83
Lehigh degree "prepared me well for an MA in Math from Univ Cal Santa Barbara in 1985. Currently teaching math part-time at Santa Barbara City College. Do not work full-time---do bookkeeping work when not teaching."
Jay Thigpen, '84
"Math was my second major; philosophy was my first. I had no career goals my first two years and took no math courses my first year. The second year I took Math 21 and 22 only. Only in my junior and senior years did I take a lot of math courses. The career option that seemed most likely for me was to become an actuary. Before my senior year I scored 8 out of 10 on the first actuary exam, and nearly got a job with an insurance company doing actuarial work the summer before my senior year. But by graduation I'd received no actuarial job offers and never scored higher than 5 out of 10 on the second actuarial exam. So I haven't made use of my math training professionally. I've worked mostly in the composition department of a nearby printer."
Roy Keller, '85
"The knowledge base I received at Lehigh has proved invaluable as it has helped me succeed in a dual roll at Smith Barney, Inc. Historically, there has been a wall between the finance and computer departments. Finance would lay the groundwork for developing an application, and the computer department would model and program on their own. Often the end result is not correct. I now run a finance group with its own programming staff. Because I understand all three areas---finance, computer programming, and modeling theory---we are able to produce applications more quickly and much cheaper.
"Due to the evolution of the PC and the software available, large corporate IS departments will undergo major retrenchment in the next decade. I feel a good portion of the computer staff should migrate to the user groups, leaving the IS departments the more mundane tasks of maintaining file servers and servicing existing mainframe applications. Corporations are usually slow to adapt, thus change to this philosophy will take a good deal of time. A mathematics major is the one discipline that can be hybrid enough to handle this emerging role.
"A mathematics major is viewed as superior to the slew of finance majors rambling around corporations. Most managers recognize and respect this trait of mathematicians, even if their only exposure to the discipline is failing Calculus I. A mathematics degree with a blend of finance and computer applications would be a rewarding curriculum that could be completed in five years without diluting the pure math portion."
Tracy Walters, '93
has been working as a Health Care Consultant for Ernst & Young LLP since graduation.
Nicole Andel, '94
"I am a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon in the Literary and Cultural Theory M.A. program. I am also accepted at Seton Hall for English and Syracuse for Linguistics for this year. The Linguistics Department at Syracuse was very interested in my dual major of math and English and were actually considering me for a TA position even though I never had a linguistics course. The people who interviewed me wherever I applied were all interested in my two majors and wanted to know how I thought they were connected.
"I actually procured a position in Carnegie Mellon's math department as a paper grader. This is a great job because I get to keep in touch with math in some way and get paid more than other jobs on campus."
Francesca Turner, '94
"Since graduation, I have been working for Innovative Systems, Inc., an international software company headed by Robert Colonna, '61 (see above). Most of our products focus on maintaining and expanding customer information for large organizations such as banks and insurance companies. I started out as a programmer analyst in the Client Service department, but I now work in Client Support focusing on product maintenance. My math background has been particularly useful in understanding programming logic as well as identifying algorithms to build customer relationships.
"I hope to start taking classes this fall towards a masters degree at either Carnegie-Mellon or the University of Pittsburgh. Ideally, I would like to focus on the mathematical representation of social networks (and create a software interface program based on those relationships)."
Rachel Kurkul, '94
"I'm working for Sedgwick Noble Lowndes, a division of Sedgwick James, a large international insurance company. I'm an account manager in the multiemployer Health and Welfare Consulting department, where my ease with numbers is extremely helpful. I live and work in San Francisco."