Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Binghamton University news:2020

The 2020 Peter Hilton Memorial Lecture

2020-03-19T13:36:44-04:00

The 2020 Peter Hilton Memorial Lecture

The 2020 Peter Hilton Memorial Lecture will be postponed to Fall 2020 due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Stay tune for our updates.

Robert Gompf, University of Texas at Austin will give the annual Peter Hilton Memorial Lecture for 2020. The lecture will be given on ~~Thursday April 30, 2020 at 3:00 p.m~~. in Lecture Hall 9. Prof. Gompf is the Jane and Roland Blumberg Centennial Professor in Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin. For more see: https://web.ma.utexas.edu/users/gompf/

The lecture will be followed by a reception at ~~4:15 p.m.~~ in The President's Reception Room, Anderson Performing Arts Center, Binghamton University. This reception is for the whole Binghamton Mathematics Community as well as for our visitors.

Peter Hilton Memorial Lecture is an annual event in memory of Peter Hilton, 1923-2010, a member of the Binghamton Mathematics Department from 1982 until his death in November 2010. He was an internationally famous member of the mathematical community. His contributions included a major role in the code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park during World War II, where he worked with Alan Turing, and important research contributions to topology, homological algebra, elementary number theory, combinatorics, and polyhedral geometry, as well as mathematics education at all levels. A collection of memoirs by people who knew Peter has been published in the December 2011 issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society.

Peter gave a talk to the department about his wartime codebreaking. You can watch it here.

David Lee Hanson [1935 - 2020]

2020-03-26T11:23:43-04:00

David Lee Hanson [1935 - 2020]

With sadness we announce the passing, on March 13, 2020, of our friend and colleague David Lee Hanson.

Dave grew up in Kansas, did his undergraduate work at MIT, and received his PhD degree in probability at Indiana University under the direction of J. R. Blum. Mathematical Reviews lists authorship or co-authorship of 54 research papers.

The enormous development of SUNY in the 1960's led to a fundamental change in the role of our department. Prior to 1968 it was an undergraduate teaching department, but starting in that year its mission was enlarged, making it also a graduate and research department. As part of that development, Dave was hired 1973 as a “leading professor”. He was an early architect and supporter of our entry into the field of statistics, still to this day a major component of our program.

At a difficult time in the department's development - a time marked by strong disagreements among faculty members - Dave took on the arduous role of Department Chair in 1983. He remained in that role for the next sixteen years, steering the department through those difficulties.

Binghamton University's transition from being a liberal arts college to being a research university was slow and not always easy. Perhaps Dave's greatest achievement during his long chairmanship was his success at guiding the deans of that period on how a research mathematical sciences department should be structured.

Long after his retirement he also continued to teach a course each semester right up to two weeks ago.

In his retirement Dave served several terms as an elected member of the Vestal School Board.

His wife Alison passed away last Fall. He is survived by his three daughters and one son.

New degree track in Statistics to launch in Fall 2020

2020-05-07T19:03:48-04:00

New degree track in Statistics to launch in Fall 2020

A new track in Statistics will soon be added to the Bachelor of Arts in Mathematical Sciences degree. Statistics is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation and presentation of data. The BA track in Statistics is designed to provide a solid mathematical and statistical foundation for a successful career in statistics, data analysis and data science. To obtain a BA degree in Mathematical Sciences with a Statistics track, a student must complete 50 credits of coursework in the field of Mathematical Sciences as follows:

Calculus I–III and Linear Algebra (16 cr.)
Number Systems (4 cr.)
Scientific Computing (2 cr.)
Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics (8 cr.)
Regression and Statistical Learning (8 cr.)
Two electives from pure mathematics courses (8 cr.)
One additional elective (4 cr.)

Detailed major requirements will be found in the 2020 University Bulletin. Inquiries should be sent to the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

As usual, to declare or drop a major or minor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, fill in this Google Form.

Erik Kjær Pedersen [1946 - 2020]

2020-06-01T10:30:11-04:00

Erik Kjær Pedersen [1946 - 2020]

With sadness we report the passing on May 24, 2020 of Professor Emeritus Erik Kjær Pedersen, our friend and colleague.

Erik grew up in the Jutland Peninsula of his native Denmark. He received his Masters Degree with emphasis in topology at Aarhus University, then the leading mathematics center in Denmark. He moved on to doctoral studies at the University of Chicago, receiving his PhD in 1974 under the direction of Richard Lashof. He had a considerable reputation in research mathematics as author or coauthor of more than sixty research papers in leading journals.

Erik returned to Denmark and spent a significant part of his career at Odense University before moving to the United States in 1990. That was when he was recruited by the Mathematical Sciences Department at Binghamton as part of an innovative SUNY program called the Graduate Research Initiative, intended to advance the research profiles of the four SUNY centers. He remained in our department until the end of 2006 when he answered the call to return to Denmark as head of the mathematical sciences department at the University of Copenhagen.

While at Binghamton, Erik had a considerable and highly positive influence on the ethos of our department. He increased our profile, organized important conferences, and in his two terms as Department Chair provided strong leadership. Nobody ever called Erik Pedersen mild-mannered. His personality filled the room.

Michael Sorensen, Head of the Mathematical Sciences Department, University of Copenhagen writes: “It is with great sadness that I have to inform you that Erik Kjær Pedersen died earlier today at a hospital in Florida after a long illness. Last summer, it was found that Erik had a brain tumor. After an operation he got relatively well, but unfortunately the improvement did not last.

“Erik, as Head of [the Copenhagen] Department for 10 years, played an absolutely invaluable role both for the department and for Danish mathematics. During his time as Head of Department, MATH's international standing was very significantly improved so that we can now compete with the best European departments. The number of external grants, many of them very prestigious, exploded. The same is true of the number of PhD students and postdocs. In addition, Erik ensured that the department is financially sound and has considerable savings.”

Erik Kjær Pedersen is survived by his wife Inger Stricker Pedersen, their three children, and several grandchildren.

Binghamton Math Graduate awarded Norbert Wiener Prize

2020-11-23T11:15:36-04:00

Binghamton Math Graduate awarded Norbert Wiener Prize

The 2019 Norbert Wiener Prize in Applied Mathematics was awarded to Marsha Berger for her fundamental contributions to adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) and to Cartesian mesh techniques for automating the simulation of compressible flows in complex geometry.

Berger received her B.S. in mathematics from State University of New York at Binghamton in 1974. She went on to receive an M.S. and a Ph.D in computer science from Stanford University in 1978 and 1982, respectively. Marsha Berger is currently a Silver Professor in the Computer Science Department at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU. She is a frequent visitor to NASA Ames, where she has spent every summer since 1990, and several sabbaticals. Her honors include membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Berger was a recipient of the IEEE Fernbach award, and was part of the team that won the 2002 Software of the Year Award from NASA for its Cart3D software.

Marsha Berger is one of the inventors of AMR algorithms, used in solving partial differential equations to improve the accuracy of a solution by locally and dynamically resolving complex features of a simulation. Berger provided the mathematical foundations, algorithms, and software that made it possible to solve many otherwise intractable simulation problems, including those related to blood flow, climate modeling, and galaxy simulation. Her mathematical contributions include local error estimators to identify where refinement is needed, stable and conservative grid interface conditions, and embedded boundary and cut-cell methods. She is part of the team that created CART3D, a NASA code based on her AMR algorithms that is used extensively for aerodynamic simulations, and which was instrumental in understanding the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster. She also helped build GeoClaw, an open source software project for ocean-scale wave modeling. It is used to simulate tsunamis, debris flows and dam breaks, among other applications.

Louis McAuley [1924 - 2020]

2020-11-23T09:01:16-04:00

Louis McAuley [1924 - 2020]

With sadness we report the passing on November 18, 2020 of Professor Emeritus Louis F. McAuley.

Louis was born in 1924 in Travelers Rest, South Carolina to Stephen Floyd and Floree Cox McAuley. He served in the army in WWII in Italy at age 19. He studied at Mars Hill Jr. College, received his Bachelor's Degree at Oklahoma State University, and his Doctorate in Mathematics at the University of North Carolina.

He was a member of the mathematics departments at the University of Maryland, the University of Wisconsin, Rutgers University, and at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He also spent time as a visitor at Louisiana State University, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and Istanbul Bilgi University in Istanbul, Turkey.

At SUNY Binghamton he served as Chairman of the Department of Mathematical Sciences from 1969 -1978, and was instrumental in developing the graduate program. He directed the doctoral work of 21 students who received PhD's in Mathematics and went on to successful careers in teaching and research.

He was predeceased by his parents, his first wife Ionene McAuley, his brother Van, and his sister Harriett. Louis is survived by his three sons John Devin, Louis Kirk, and Jeff Cox, their mother Patricia McAuley, and his longtime partner Kathryn Espe, as well as his niece Charlotte Poole and nephew Stephen McCall.