Michael Albertson Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania. Fields of interest: graph theory (especially coloring), geometric graph theory, relative symmetry and distinguishing, discrete geometry, isometry groups, combinatorics, theoretical computer science, the impact of computing on the way math is done, soccer, tennis, and snorkeling in Hawaii.
Mike is the L. Clark Seelye Professor of Mathematics and of Computer Science. He loves his sunny corner office.
Pau Atela Ph.D., Boston University. Fields of Interest: dynamical systems, Hamiltonian mechanics, chaos, computer visualization in mathematics and, recently, phyllotaxis.
Pau spent his sabbatical in the spring of 1995 at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at the University of California at Berkeley. He grew up in Mexico and earned a Licenciatura en Matemáticas at the University of Barcelona before coming to Boston. He spent 1989-91 as an Instructor at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He, Chris Golé and members of the Botanical garden recently mounted an exhibit about plant spirals in Lyman House.
James Callahan Courant Institute, New York University. Fields of interest: geometry, dynamical systems, chaos and fractals, catastrophe theory, relativity, most areas of applied analysis, and building things.
Jim has made research trips to England and France. In 1975 he received the Lester R. Ford award of the Mathematical Association of America. At Smith, he has received the faculty distinguished teaching award and the Sears-Roebuck Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership. He was the director of the Five College Calculus Project (funded by the National Science Foundation), and coauthor of Calculus in Context, published by W. H. Freeman & Co. More recently, Jim wrote Geometry of Spacetime an Undergraduate Text in Mathematics about relativity published by Springer-Verlag in 2000. He is also the main system administrator of the department's Unix computers.
David Cohen Ph.D., University of New Hampshire. Fields of Interest: empirical logic, quantum theory, the application of logic, analysis and algebra to physics and the mathematical education of non-mathematicians.
David has pioneered the use of collaborative techniques in mathematics courses and is the author of An Introduction to Hilbert Space and Quantum Logic and Calculus: the Language of Change with Jim Henle. He was one of the first winners of the Kathleen Compton Sherrerd '54 teaching award. David has spent sabbaticals in Sweden, Switzerland, and France.
Christophe Golé Ph.D., Boston University. Fields of Interest: dynamical systems, symplectic topology, mathematical biology (phyllotaxis), reading, cooking and playing piano jazz.
Before coming to Smith in 1997, Chris held postdocs at the University of Minnesota, ETH Zürich, SUNY Stony Brook, Stanford University and UC Santa Cruz. He grew up in France and in North Africa, and got his BA from Paris VII University. He is the author of a book on dynamical systems, Symplectic Twist Maps. Chris, Pau Atela and members of the botanical garden recently mounted an exhibit about plant spirals in Lyman House. In 2003-2004 he was the faculty director of the Smith Junior Year Abroad Program in Geneva, Switzerland.
Ruth Haas (Chair), Ph.D., Cornell University (Operations Research). Fields of Interest: combinatorics, splines, commutative and computer algebras, operations research, and many outdoor athletic pursuits.
Ruth's research is both algebraic and combinatorial, and spans both theoretical and applied topics. She recently spent a sabbatical at the University of Twente at Enschede, Netherlands.
Katherine Halvorsen D.Sc., Harvard School of Public Health (Biostatistics). Fields of Interest: statistics, statistical methods in medical research, and hiking.
Katherine has taught in such exotic places as Lusaka, Zambia and Newton, Mass. Her research involves the problem of analyzing data assembled from different sources. She also has graduate degrees from the University of Washington and Boston University.
Chris Hardin Ph.D., Cornell University. Fields of Interest: logic, logics of knowledge, theoretical computer science, rock climbing and jazz piano.
Chris received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2005 and is now a visiting assistant professor. His research involves using algebra to study and manipulate computer programs, creating a logic for how people's knowledge changes over time as they interact, and predicting the future in a practically useless but theoretically interesting manner. He greatly enjoyed a recent conference in Uruguay.
James Henle, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Fields of Interest: set theory, logic, nonstandard analysis, mathematics education, philosophy of mathematics, music, and food.
Jim was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines and has made research trips to England and Venezuela. His current research takes him to to flashing lights, sticky bounces, historic camera angles, economic inequality and tiling planes with squares. He is the author of An Outline of Set Theory and the coauthor of Infinitesimal Calculus (with E.M. Kleinberg), Sweet Reason (with the late Tom Tymoczko), and Calculus: The Language of Change (with David Cohen). Jim plays clarinet in the Northampton Woodwind Quintet and the Valley Light Opera.
Nicholas Horton, Sc.D., Harvard University (Biostatistics). Fields of Interest: statistics, particularly the development of models for the analysis of longitudinal studies with incomplete observations, statistical education and extending the rail trail network in Northampton and surrounding communities.
Nick's research involves the development of new statistical methods to address problems of clustered or repeated observations that may be missing for some subjects. This work is being applied in studies of substance abuse, health services, and psychiatric problems. He's worked on projects and/or taught in Russia, Greece, Canada and Tanzania. When he's not chasing after his daughters, or organizing Pi Day activities (since his office is Burton 314), he likes to walk, juggle and cook.
Catherine McCune Ph.D., University of Massachusetts. Fields of Interest: minimal surfaces, constant mean curvature surfaces, the KdV equation, reading, photography, hiking in Tirol, traveling.
After receiving her Ph.D. in 1999, Catherine had a postdoctoral position in Berlin, Germany at the Sonderforschungsbereich 288 at the Technische Universitaet Berlin. In January 2001, she returned to the USA and began a postdoctoral position at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Catherine has become acquainted with other geometers through attending conferences in Germany, Japan, France, England, Italy, Portugal, China, and India.
Mary Murphy M.A.T., Johns Hopkins University. Fields of interest: writing to learn mathematics, mathematics education, and singing.
Mary's long-term project is a reform of the precalculus curriculum. The first step was the publication of a lab manual, Precalculus in Context: Functioning in the Real World, now in its second edition. She and her coauthors have recently completed the second edition of a textbook, Precalculus: Concepts in Context.
Sarah Reznikoff Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley. Fields of Interest: functional analysis and operator algebras (especially subfactors and planar algebras), logic and set theory.
Sarah comes to Smith directly from the west coast, where she has spent most of her adult life. After completing her undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of California, She was a postdoc at the University of Victoria and a visiting assistant professor at Reed College. Sarah appears in Porridge, pulleys and Pi, a documentary about Berkeley professors Vaughan Jones and Henrik Lenstra. Her extracurricular interests include rock-climbing, sewing, and New York Times crosswords.
Leanne Robertson Ph.D., University of California-Berkeley. Fields of Interest: number theory (especially cyclotomic fields), geometry, field theory, swimming and hiking with her family.
Leanne's current research is on power integral bases and class numbers for cyclotomic fields. She has made research trips to France, Hungary, Canada, and Oregon, and spent most of her recent sabbatical at the University of California at San Diego. She is a member of the Five College Number Theory Seminar. When she was a graduate student, she was a teaching assistant in the Summer Mathematics Institute for Women, held at Mills College and the University of California at Berkeley, where she developed a strong interest in the recruitment and retention of women in the mathematical sciences. Leanne is on leave for the 2006-2007 academic year.
Marjorie Senechal, Ph.D., Illinois Institute of Technology. Fields of Interest: mathematical crystallography, geometry, the history of science and technology, Albania and the Balkans, fiction and nonfiction, and cycling.
Marjorie is Louise Wolff Kahn Professor of Mathematics and a member of the program in the history of science. She has made research trips to France, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Brazil, The Philippines and the Soviet Union. In 1982, she won the Carl B. Allendoefer Award of the Mathematical Association of America. She has been the editor of the MAA book series Carus Mathematical Monographs, and is co-editor-in-chief of the Mathematical Intelligencer. She is the author of Crystalline Symmetries, Quasicrystals and Geometry and Long Life to Your Children! a Portrait of High Albania, and the editor of several other books. She is formerly the director of the Kahn Institute. Marjorie spent her most recent sabbatical leave in research trips to Moscow and Kiev (with a side trip to her ancestral home in Probuzhna), to the Geometry Center in Minneapolis, to Paris, and to Albania.
Patricia Sipe Ph.D., Cornell University. Fields of Interest: complex analysis, Teichmuller spaces, mathematical biology, mathematics education, women's studies, and Andean flute music.
Patricia spent 1987-88 in Chile as a Fulbright professor and now enjoys conversations, mathematical and otherwise, in Spanish. She also has a special interest in mathematical issues in statistics. She pursued them recently on sabbatical as a Fellow at the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College. Her project is ``DES and Risk: Subjectivity in Statistical Methods for Public Health'', but she will continue work in complex analysis (visits to Cornell) and mathematical biology (Harvard School of Public Health).