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Albert W. Tucker, 1905-1995 THE NEWSLETTER OF THE MA THEMA TICAL ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA Mathematicians Honored by National Academy Volume 15, Number 2 Three mathematicians are among the sixteen through funds provided by individuals selected by the National Academy IBM Corporation. of Sciences (NAS) to receive awards honor­ The NAS Award for Scien­ ing their outstanding contributions to science. tific Reviewing is given in In this Issue The awards will be presented on April 24th at a different field each year. a ceremony in Washington, DC, during the The field for the 1995 4 John Nash and academy's 132nd annual meeting. the Nobel Prize award is mathematics. The NAS Award in Applied Mathematics and Robion C. Kirby, a profes­ Numerical Analysis goes to Julian D. Cole, sor in the Department of 5 The Craft of the Margaret Darrin Professor of Applied Mathematics at the U ni ver­ Teaching Mathematics in the Department of Mathe mati­ sity of California at Berke­ cal Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Insti­ ley (Berkeley, California), tute (Troy, New York) and Joseph B. Keller, 9 Personal will receive the award for the Lewis M. Terman Professor of Mathemat­ the list of problems in low Opinion ics and Mechanical Engineering in the De­ dimensional topology that partment of Mathematics at Stanford he both created and main­ Joseph B. Keller 12 A Building for University (Stanford, California). Dr. Cole has tained. Generations have Mathematicians made fundamental contributions to applied been greatly influenced by mathematics and numerical analysis, charac­ Kirby's list. The award of terized by deep physical and mathematical $5000 was established by 13 New P61ya insights. Dr. Keller is known for his seminal Annual Reviews, Inc. and Lecturer contributions to applied mathematics, in par­ the Institute for Scientific ticular his geometrical theory of diffraction Information in honor of J. 14 Workshops and his work on water-wave propagation. The Murray Luck. award is set at $10,000 and was established Robion C. Kirby 19 MathFest 1995 Albert W. Tucker, 1905-1995 38 Employment Former MAA president and chair of the teacher, but his love of mathematics led him to Princeton Mathematics Department Albert delay his teaching career in order to earn a Opportunities William Tucker died on January 25, 1995 of master's degree at Toronto and then a Ph.D. at complications of congestive heart failure. A Princeton. He arrived at Princeton in 1929 and pillar of the MAA for many years, he left be­ remained there the rest of his life (except for hind a mathematical career of education, re­ sabbatical and fellowship leaves). His research search, and service with few equals. in topology led to appointment and promotion at Princeton, culminating in the Albert B. Dod Albert William ('AI') Tucker was born in Professorship of Mathematics in 1954. He was Ontario, Canada in 1905. His father was a chair of the Princeton Mathematics Department mathematics teacher and later became a Pres­ from 1954 to 1964. byterian minister. Al Tucker's life reflected his father's in its love of mathematics, high In 1948 George Dantzig, the father of linear moral standards, and concern for others. While programming, visited Princeton to try to inter­ Tucker excelled in school, his only chance to est John von Neumann in studying the math­ go to a university rested in winning one oftwo ematical foundations of linear programming. The Mathematical province-wide scholarships to the University Von Neumann was uninterested, but Tucker, who Association of America of Toronto. When he failed to eam one during happened to give Dantzig a ride to the train sta­ 1529 Eighteenth Street. NW his senior year, he was forced to repeat the tion on his way home, found the topic intriguing Washington. DC 20036 year to try again-this time successfully. He and expressed interest in studying it. Thus be­ planned to become a school mathematics See Tucker on page 3 FOCUS April 1995 Editorial FOCUS This is the story of one young person at one four-year college. It has a happy ending. But FOCUS is published by The Mathematical if the story is at all indicative of what happens elsewhere, then it carries a worrying Association of America, 1529 Eighteenth message. Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20036- Last December, Melissa, as I will call her, completed her first semester of college 1385, six times a year: February, April, June, mathematics. She was one of a small number of students in the class who scored an A. August, October, and December. Her instructor remarked that not only was she one of the brightest students in the class, Editor and Chair of the MAA Newsletter she was also one of the most active in terms of class participation. Nothing remarkable Editorial Committee: Keith J. Devlin, so far. We might not get as many A-students as we would like, but there are plenty of them Saint Mary's College of California about. Associate Editor: Donald J. Albers, MAA Melissa was a little unusual in that she was only 15 when the course began, having Associate Executive Director and Director enrolled for two college courses while still ajunior at the local high school. But again, of Publications and Programs nothing remarkable. There are plenty of examples of such early developers. Managing Editor: Harry Waldman, MAA What might surprise you is to learn that Melissa's grade in high school math the previous Production Specialist: Amy Stephenson­ year had been C and that the high school had refused to let her take any further math Fabbri, MAA courses unless she repeated the entire course and scored a B or better. Proofreader: Meredith Zimmerman, You might also raise an eyebrow to hear that the director of Special Education Programs MAA for the district had recently advised Melissa that she should leave school early, forget her desire to study science, and seek a career as an air hostess. (I should perhaps explain the Copy Editor: Nancy Wilson, Saint Mary's involvement of the Special Education unit. Melissa has a number of diagnosed learning College of California disabilities that qualify her for a modified education program as a 'Section 504' student. Letters to the editor should be addressed to: The disabilities manifest themselves largely in her writing, and the recommended modi­ Keith Devlin, Saint Mary's College of fications consist solely of being allowed extra time to take exams and complete assign­ California, P.O. Box 3517, Moraga, CA ments.) 94575; e-mail: [email protected] "Perhaps Melissa's mathematical talent had been so hidden that the high school math­ The FOCUS subscription price to individual ematics teachers and the Special Ed director had failed to see it," you might hazard. members of the Association is $6.00, Maybe, but you should know that, as a 504 student, Melissa had undergone an intensive included in the annual dues. (Annual dues program of testing by an educational psychologist, who had classified Melissa as in the for regular members, exclusive of annual 95 percentile in most intellectual categories and the 99 percentile in some of them. On subscription prices for MAA journals, are top of that, Melissa's father is a professional mathematician, and had spent a consider­ $68.00. Student and unemployed members receive a 66 percent discount; emeritus able time trying to explain to the school math teacher that his daughter's relatively minor members recei ve a 50 percent discount; new educational disabilities obscured a remarkable mathematical ability. At the start of the members receive a 40 percent discount for year he had predicted to the teacher that Melissa would score a C on the course if little the first two membership years.) or no allowance were made for her learning disability (she did score a C) and would perform extremely well if given adequate time (she scored a 97%, the highest mark in Copyright © 1995 by The Mathematical the class, when allowed extra time in an end-of-semester examination). Association of America (Incorporated). Educational institutions may reproduce So what on earth went wrong? How could a high school mathematics teacher get it so articles for their own use, but not for sale, wrong? How could a trained director of Special Education Programs get it so wrong? I provided that the following citation is used: should point out that the school system in question is generally regarded as one of the "Reprinted with permission of FOCUS, the best public school systems in the nation, with all the numerical indicators putting it in newsletter ofThe Mathematical Association the top 95 percentile. of America (Incorporated)." Before I suggest an answer to the above questions, I should come clean and admit that Second-class postage paid at Washington, the "Melissa" of this story really is called Melissa, and she is my daughter. This is how DC and additional mailing offices. I come to know so much about this case. Postmaster: Send address changes to the Membership and Subscriptions De­ Having talked at some length with the math teacher involved, I think that a large part of partment, The Mathematical Association of the problem is that she and I had entirely different conceptions of what mathematics is. America, 1529 Eighteenth Street Northwest, Though the teacher espoused all the fashionable rhetoric about mathematics being cre­ Washington, DC 20036-1385. ative and the importance of focusing mathematics education on open-ended discovery, ISSN: 0731-2040 she did not seem to believe it. For this teacher, when the chalk hit the board, mathematics Printed in the United States of America. was about the mastery of dull, mindless, algorithmic procedures. To her, Melissa's 'how' Printed on recycled paper.
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