Math Department Chairs

• Richard Silvester 1892-1912
• Henry Harrison 1912-1920
• Thomas Taliaferro 1920-1939
• Tobias Dantzig 1939-1941
• Monroe Martin, acting 1941-1942
• Monroe Martin 1942-1954
• Stanley Jackson 1954-1958
• Leon Cohen 1958-1968
• Jacob (Jack) Goldhaber 1968-1977
• William (Brit) Kirwan 1977-1981
• Jacob (Jack) Goldhaber, acting 1981-1982
• John Osborn 1982-1985
• Nelson Markley 1985-1991
• Raymond Johnson 1991-1996
• Michael Fitzpatrick 1996-2002
• Daniel Rudolph 2002-2003
• Michael Fitzpatrick 2003-2007
• James Yorke 2007-2013
• Scott Wolpert 2013-2019
• Doron Levy, acting 2019-2020
• Doron Levy, 2020-

Note: Before the 1930's, the Department consisted of one Professor and possibly one or two other faculty. The Professor is assumed to have been the Chair or Head.

Richard Silvester was simultaneously President. Thomas Taliaferro was also Dean of Engineering 1917-21 and Dean of Arts and Sciences in the mid 1930s.

Department Faculty/Staff Photos

Math Department Faculty 2025

Front Row: Doron Levy, Archana Khuarna, Harry Tamvakis, Ramachandran, Bogdan Zavylov, Armin Gholampour, Maria Cameron, Huy Quang Nguyen, Rosca Raluca, Konstantina Trivisa, Abba Gumel
2nd Row: Kaitlyn Lloyd, Tom Haines, Chis Laskowski, Eric Slud, Christian Zickert, Larry Washington, Tamas Darvas, Yaxiong Liu, Antoine Mellet, Or Hershkovits, Radu Balan
3rd Row: Ayala Nuriely, Richard Wentworth, Kate Truman, Ida Chan, Srivatsav Kunnawalkam Elayavalli, Patrick Brosnan, Henri Berestycki, Eitan Tadmor, Charles Levermore, Ron Peled, Alex Safsten, Tobias vonPetersdorff, James Schafer
4th Row: Andrew Senger, Junyan Zhao, Dori Bejleri, Matei Machedon, Shiferaw Berhanu, Christian Rosendal, Steve Halperin, Jonathan Rosenberg, Hannah Hoganson, Rodrigo Trevino, Christopher Henderson, Arka Adhikari, 
5th Row: Anna Szczekutowicz, Alan Yashinski Steve Dobo, Yu Gu, Andrew Lawrie, Guillame Dumas, Kendall Williams, Leonid Koralov, William Bill Goldman, Vince Lyzinski, Deep Ray, Boyu Zhang

Math Department Faculty/Staff Photo, 1946

1st row, left to right: Dick Wick Hall, Harvey Cheston, Richard A. Good, Monroe Martin (Chair), Henry Dantzig, Daniel C. Lewis, Stanley B. Jackson.
2nd row, left to right: Lawrence Ringenberg, Jean Boyer, George Brewster, Verna Waters, Leon Luckenbach, John L. Vanderslice.
3rd row, left to right: Josephine Good, A. H. Mason, Jessie Mennekin, Catherine Callegary, Ruth Bari, Ethel Snyder

Math Department Faculty/Staff Photo, 1979

1st row, left to right: R. Warner, G. Ehrlich, K. Berg, P. Milkulski, S. Sorensen, J. Shepherd, R. Herb, K. Deck, M. Razar, J. Cohen, P. Wolfe.
2nd row, left to right: C. Berenstein, B. Vanderslice, J. Owings, J. Horvath, P. Smith, R. Syski, M. Zedek, L. Cohen, H. Chu, A. Kleppner, J. Brace, W. Kirwan.
3rd row, left to right: S. Jackson, S. Wolpert, E. Slud, C. H. Cook, L. Zalcman, B. Kedem, R. Lipsman, J. Henkelman, D. Schneider, J. Cooper, R. Traxler
4th row, left to right: A. Douglis, T-P. Liu, E. Correl, J. Auslander, R. Ellis, R. Good, L. Lipkin, D. Gulick, A. Katok, N. Davidson, M. Alter.
5th row, left to right: A. Figa-Talamanca, R. Kellogg, J. Sather, H. King, C. Johnson, J. Benedetto, N. Markley, P. Fitzpatrick, G. Lehner, P. Yang, D. Sweet.
6th row, left to right: J. Hummel, F. Olver, H. Winkelnkemper, D. Kueker, J. Alexander, D. Shanks, A. Currier, M. Buchner, W. Adams, L. Washington, K. Stellmacher.

Math Department Faculty/Staff Photo 1991

First Row Left to Right: Ken Berg. Scott Wolpert, Harold Edmundson, Bert Neri, Abram Kagan, Ron Lipsman, Clarence Cook, Bob Warner, Denny Gulick, T.Y. Lee,
Second Row: Joel Cohen, Jim Schafer, Gertrude Ehrlich, Mike Boyle, Celso Grebogi, Chris Laskowski, Mark Freidlin, Eric Slud, Harlan Glaz, Rebecca Herb, Larry Washington, Jeff Adams, Manos Grillakis, (...)
Thrid Row: Karsten Grove, Henry King, Peter Wolfe, Guido Lehner, Bob Ellis, Issa Fakhre-Zakeri, Ryszard Syski, Sudip Bose, Jim Owings, Hsin Chu, Der-Den Chang, (...)
Fourth Row: Garret Stuck, John Millson, Steve Kudla, Ray Johnson, Ken Lopez-Escobar, Dan Shanks, Jerry Dancis, Adam Kleppner, Dan Sweet, Lynn Clearly, Grace Yang, 
Fifth Row: David Keuker, Paul Green, Richard Good, Elmar Winkelnkemper, Jim Hummel, (...), (...), Mishael Zedek,, David Lay, Richard Herman, Jim Yorke, (...), Joe Auslander, Leon Greenberg, John Maddocks, David Hamilton, Bill Adams, Paul Smith, Jay Alexander, Piotr Mikulski, Avron Douglis, Boris Levit



Math Department Faculty/Staff Photo, 2001

1st row, left to right: Sijue Wu, David Kueker, John Benedetto, Frances Gulick, Jerry Dancis, Joel Cohen, Jim Yorke, Leon Greenberg, Jeff Cooper, Rich Schwartz, Niranjan Ramachandran, Becky Herb, Denny Gulick, Bob Ellis, Abram Kagan, Bob Warner
2nd row, left to right: Dennis Healy, John Osborn, Karsten Grove, Jim Schafer, Chris Laskowski, Scott Wolpert, Ben Kedem, Mike Boyle, Garry Helzer, Misha Brin, Mark Freidlin, Michael Jakobson
3rd row, left to right: Mike Fitzpatrick, Jonathan Rosenberg, Hsin Chu, Dan Rudolph, Harland Glaz, Eric Slud, Henry King, Peter Wolfe, Georg Dolzmann, Bo Li, Ricardo Nochetto, Jian-Guo Liu, Ken Berg
4th row, left to right: Ray Johnson, Jiu-Kang Yu, Bill Adams, David Lay, Dave Levermore, Brian Hunt, Frank Olver, Bill Goldman, David Hamilton, John Millson, Michael Rapoport (semester visitor), Matei Machedon, Tzong-Yow Lee, Ron Lipsman
5th row, left to right: Larry Washington, Walter Neumann (colloquium speaker), Paul Green, Bill Schildknecht, Fawzi Emad, Paul Smith, Carlos Berenstein, Marshall Cohen (long-term visitor), Steve Kudla, Jeff Adams

Pictures from Geometry and Solitons Conference In Honor of Sergei Novikov, September, 1998

Pictures from the Finite Element Analysis and Eigenvalue Problems Conference, In Honor of John Osborn

Monroe Martin Prize Presentation, 1996

John Horvath Reminiscences

When I arrived at the University of Maryland in 1957, it was one of the most important centers for partial differential equations in the whole world.

Most of the activity took place in the Institute for Fluid Dynamics and Applied Mathematics, which was situated on the third floor of the present Mathematics Building, while the Department of Mathematics occupied the first and the second floor. The fourth floor is a later addition.

Many of the mathematicians at the Institute had a joint appointment in the Department, and did teach a course. Some, who originally came to the Institute, switched to the Department.

Two of those are still with us, though both are emeriti now. One of them, Karl Stellmacher, gave a negative solution to a celebrated problem of Hadamard whether the only partial differential operators which exhibit Huygens' phenomenon are those which can be obtained by a change of variables from the wave operator. Among Avron Douglis' numerous publications, there is one written in collaboration with Shmuel Agmon and Louis Nirenberg which is one of the most often quoted papers in the history of mathematics.

The first generation of member of the Institute was recruited by Monroe Martin, it first director, and by Alexander Weinstein, who has outstanding contributions to eigenvalues and to singular partial differential operators. Unfortunately Weinstein had a difficult personality, and some of those who came because of him, left because of him.

In the early 1960's New York State created five Einstein chairs in science, each endowed with the then enormous sum of one hundred thousand dollars. Two of the five Einstein professors came from Maryland: Joaquin Diaz and Elliot Montroll. Diaz died at a relatively young age, and Montroll returned later from Rochester to Maryland. Among the other mathematicians who were at the Institute, let me mention Hans Weinberger, who left for Minnesota and was the first director of the Institute for Mathematics and Applications there, and J. H. Bramble, L. Payne and G. S. S. Ludford, who all went to Cornell. Between 1953 and 1960, the great Hungarian-Swedish mathematician Marcel Riesz spent at least one semester each year at the Institute.

For young mathematicians working in partial differential equations it was customary to spend a year or two, or at least a few months, at the Institute. Among the visitors, let me list Shmuel Agmon, Lars Garding, Lars Hormander, Jacques-Louis Lions (who came wiht his then two-year old son Pierre-Louis, now a world-class mathematician in his own right), Jaak Peetre, Carlo Pucci, Wolfgang Walter.

Another distinguished member of the Institute was J. M Burgers, the "father of magnetohydrodynamics." A young colleague, who lectured recently on the Burgers equation, was surprised when I told him that Burgers spent the last thirty years or so of his life at Maryland.

The Martin-Marietta Company originally wanted to found an "Institute for Fluid Dynamics," and it was only at the insistence of Weinstein that "and Applied Mathematics" was added to its name. At one of the unfortunate reorganizations it was renamed "Institute for Physical Science and Technology" and no one seems to have protested that mathematics was left out, in spite of the fact that to this day a lot of very important mathematical activity takes place there. However, during the mid-sixties the Department started to play an increasingly important role in the mathematical life of the University.

Jackson Reminiscences

Remarks made by Stan Jackson on May 9, 1978, at the retirement dinner for him and for Karl Stellmacher

If Jack Goldhaber actually was able to keep a straight face while giving a reasonable facsimile of the script he gave me, I am much reminded of the comment attributed to Mark Twain when he was informed of the report of his death. With a typically low key reply, Mark answered that the report had been "greatly exaggerated." So with Jack's statement I am deeply grateful, but I fear the report is "greatly exaggerated."

You will be pleased, I am sure, to hear that I do not anticipate giving an extended address. Probably you are familiar with the description of a professor as a person who, if you let him start talking, will continue to do so until he stops with a click after fifty minutes. But I have to be careful. Apparently in my case the click is out of adjustment. At least on the teacher evaluation forms which I just submitted for Bill Adams nearly half of my students noted I have a tendency to run overtime, and once during the semester Peter Wolfe had to evict me in order to teach his own class. Since I would hate to ask him to act as bouncer tonight, I will try to exercise discretion. In any case Karl and I promised each other to limit our remarks, fearing that otherwise we would find it difficult to waken you when it was time to go home.

The first thing on my mind is a wish to thank the Department for the concern you showed me while I was sick and since, and for the extraordinary way you took over my work when I was in the hospital and unable to carry it on myself. I certainly owe the Department an unpayable debt, and I shall be eternally grateful.

As I approach retirment, I am greatly impressed with what a curious and unpredictable thing memory is. Looking back over my years here at Maryland, I find I do not remember the things I would expect to remember. I do not even remember the things I would like to remember. Instead it is like looking at a series of miscellaneous snapshots. I thought tonight I would just show you briefly some of the early snapshots from my memory album many of which will go further back than many of you here will be prepared to share.

The first snapshot is certainly further back than when most of you had your first exposure to Maryland. It concerns my first visit to College Park, which took place in the early summmer of 1941. I had been at the University of Wisconsin but under their "up or out" policy I was due to leave. I came here by train for an interview. The ticket agent in Madison, Wisconsin was unable to locate College Park but sold me a ticket to Baltimore, telling me it was the same price. So I came on a night train from Chicago--on the B & O as I recall it--and arrived in Washington at the Union Station (which was then a genuine station) at some unearthly hour like 6:00 A.M. Prowling around the Union Station, I was gratified to discover that within an hour there would be a commuter train having a stop at College Park. I took this train and arrived at College Park some time shortly after 7:00 A. M. Judging that for someone applying for a job to call his prospective department head at that hour in the morning would be an action somewhere between bad taste and stupidity, I waited around the station till a more reasonable hour and called Professor Tobias Dantzig, who was then Head of the Department here, around 9:00 A. M. to report that I had arrived. He promtly asked me where I was to which I replied that I was at the station. His next question surprised me. He asked, "What station?" When I replied the station in College Park there was dead silence over the phone for a minute. Then Toby responded, "Hell, I didn't know there was one!" But he sent someone to pick me up. And that was my introduction to College Park. The following interview eventuated in my association with Maryland.

For the benefit of those who have known the University only in recent years I should explain that there are very substantial changes. I am told the biggest pre-war enrollment at College Park was about 3500 whereas today it is close to 35,000. Many of the now familiar buildings did not exist. On the side of the road which now contains Math, Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, the Undergraduate Library and the Student Union there was nothing, according to my memory, except the barns belonging to the College of Agriculture. McKeldin Library did not exist and there was an unbroken sweep from the Adminstration Building to Arundel Hall at the top of the hill and even this area was not all turfed over. It was then the "new" part of the campus. At that time the Math Department, which consisted of approximately six regular members and about the same number of Graduate Assistants, was housed in a suite of three or four connecting offices on the second floor of what is now known as H. J. Patterson Hall, where the Botany Department is now located though the name Patterson is a comparatively recent addition. The long wing parallel to the road did not exist at this time, just the rectangular block with the cupola on top. To fill in the picture a little, I should explain that the Physics Department was in the basement and the entire Engineering College on the first floor. For obvious reasons this building was known as the Engineering Building. It is of some interest however to note that the metal plates by each doorknob were all stamped "AS" from which I deduce that in some previous incarnation this had been the Arts and Sciences Building. But when I arrived it was the Engineering Building. As you are aware, the University uses letters to designate certain of its buildings. Thus our present Math Building is Y while the Physics Building is Z. In this nomenclature, if you look up H. J. Patterson Hall you will find it is labelled E. The E originally stood for Engineering. In the same vein, the building which Chemistry occupied for many years was lettered K, a letter which I always supposed was bestowed by someone using a phonetic spelling of Chemistry. I do not seem to find it in use now.

Among the Department members when I arrived was a man named George Aldrich (I am uncertain how the name was spelled), with whom I shared an office at least for a time. If I should say that he was born an old maid I would be guilty of using sexist language, so I won't say it, but you get the idea. He was very precise and meticulous. The first incident I shall report about George I did not actually witness, but it was told me as a fact and it is certainly in character. Apparently George went into a classroom in E where he was scheduled to teach, and found the chairs neatly arranged in rows but the front row had one more chair that all the others. This affronted George's sense of symmetry to the extent that he took the offending extra chair out into the hall and threw it down the stairs, much to the astonishment of the students, some of whom were just coming up. The second incident I did observe since it took place in our office. George came in after a class looking a little upset. I never did learn what had happened to bother him, but he slammed his books down on the desk and stated emphatically, "The University would be a wonderful place to work if it weren't for the &%#@ students."

As the war drew to a close, the University was badly squeezed for space and apparently arranged to obtain some buildings which had been in use in some of the military bases during the war. These were given the double letter designations AA, BB, CC, DD, EE, FF, GG, HH, and a few others. They were erected not far from the Preinkert Fieldhouse and it is my understanding that the students of that era promptly dubbed the area Stuttering Gulch. Some of these buildings at least are still in use, and it is interesting that in the last schedule of classes we are still having the nerve to refer to them as "Temporaries." At all events Mathematics was moved into FF. I do not recall exactly what year this was but the move took place just shortly before the fall registration and we moved in without heat, light, phone, or running water. I recall that Monroe Martin, who was then our Department Head, once told me that that was the most peaceful registration he ever had. With no phone anyone who wanted to confer with him had to come in person and most didn't bother. For the rest of us however, it was a definite annoyance to have to go to to another building to use the toilet, expecially since the nearest building was GG and that had no running water either. A rather high proportion of my memory snapshots seem to center around our days in FF.

The building FF was a one-story H-shaped building and whoever designed the heating system had not been let into the secret that hot air rises. At all events, the heating was by a forced-draft system in which the hot air was blown down from overhead. Maybe the designer got carried away with the appropriateness of using hot air for a building to be used as a classroom building. In any case it was a real experience to teach there on a cold day. With the blast of hot air coming down from above one would usually be sweating about down to the waist while the feet were icy cold.

At that time FF was on the edge of wide open fields, so were were not without appropriate fauna. One day as I was working peacefully at my desk I became aware of a rustling which I finally identified as coming from the waste basket. I peered down in it and was somewhat surprised to see a mouse which had apprarently fallen into the basket and been unable to get out. Under the assumption that he would welcome a little help in obtaining release, I picked him up by the tail. But he succeeded in turning around and giving my finger a rather painful bit so that in suprise I dropped him and never saw him again. Thus, being bitten by a mouse was an occupational hazard of teaching mathematics in FF.

The mouse episode makes me think of another animal event. I don't know if Zoology was making use of them for lab purposes, but there appeared to be a number of cats around. One of them seemed attracted to FF and was welcomed with open arms by the Graduate Assistants who provided it a box in their office. Seeking some classical allusion they decided on the name Archimedes. This seemed appropriate enough until the day that Archimedes had kittens! But the GAs were equal to the occasion. Archimedes became Archimedia. Moreover the kittens were designated (or should I say littered?) as "Alpha," "Beta," "Gamma," "Delta," ... Actually Archimedia produced several litters of kittens and the nomenclature for the kittens was continued. It had been my memory that the names never reached as far as "Mu" ("Mew") which would seem the most appropriate of all but I have been assured by Jean Porter (then Jean Boyer) who was a GA at the time that they did indeed get beyond "Mu" and that the last kitten received that name of "Rho."

As was to be expected from its history, FF was not too solidly built. This appears in the following episode. As you entered FF the first room on the right was FF7. This was a small classroom which was also used for things like colloquia. Unfortunately FF7 developed a hole in the floor where one board started to pull away from adjacent ones creating a gap which grew worse and worse. There was some weary joking about losing a professor down through the hole. Of course this was reported but nothing seemed to happen. Probably this was par for the course since I am sure the maintenance department was buried with many things that sounded more serious. At all events, two of our Department, Dick Wick Hall and Werner Leuter, became irked at the lack of attention. They went into FF7 and jumped on the floor until they really broke it. Then it was reported as a real emergency (without reporting how the emergency arose). This time the maintenance department actually came. They looked matters over, put up a big sign saying "DANGER," and went away for three months while we got along without using FF7.

By this time building J, the present Engineering Classroom Building, had come into existence. Since some of our classes were made up almost wholly of engineers and since it is a long way from J to FF it became customary for us to schedule some of our classes in J. This made an added constraint in making out teaching schedules, since the distance made it not feasible to give anyone classes in FF and J in consecutive hours. Also since J was quite new it was not too well landscaped and it was quite a trick to get in or out after a rain without getting covered with mud. I recall that one day I was picking my way out rather carefully after a shower when I met one of our GAs, George Rawling, coming in. He said, "Stop and I'll tell you whether you're a pure or an applied mathematician." I stopped and he looked down and observed, "You don't have mud on your shoes. You're an applied mathematician." As I recall it I pointed out that if my feet were clean that ought to make me a "pure" mathematician but he didn't see it that way.

For those of you who are at all new in the Department a word of explanation is in order here. For many years the Department had a two-semester course Math 5 and 6 which was required of all the Business College students. I am sure Gertrude [Ehrlich] will remember Math 5, though probably without great enthusiasm. This was in the days when a 15-hour teaching load was normal and on one occasion, as I remember it, Gertrude had the uneviable distinction of drawing a teaching assignment which included three sections of Math 5. Actually Math 5 was simply an algebra course slightly modified to consider some applications that had at least the smell of business, such as promissory notes and simple discount. For this purpose it was frequently necessary to calculate the number of days between dates. For example if you wish to borrow money on September 4 and pay it back on December 24, it is necessary to know the number of days between these dates in order to calculate the interest. This apparently innocent type of question made for incredible difficulty for all the Math 5 teachers and leads to what I think is my favorite memory snapshot from FF days. This one concerns Shep. In the semester in question Shep was teaching at least one section of Math 5 and students were regularly coming in to see him for help when they felt it was needed. On this particular day a student came in all smiling and happy and announced that he had been studying the material hard and felt he could do the problems. The only thing that seemed to bother him was that he never could remember whether there were 30 or 31 days in Februrary! And lest you think there was something deficient in Shep's teaching let me add an experience of Dick Wick Hall's (he that was involved in the FF7 floor episode). Working on the same type of problems as Shep, he asked one of the girls in his Math 5 class point blank how many days there were in March and received the astonishing reply, "Really, Dr. Hall, I wouldn't even hazard a guess."

Let me close the account of the FF days with an episode that was a bit traumatic though not serious. There was still a serious squeeze on space and toward the close of our times in FF we were sharing it with a nursery school run, if I remember correctly, by a Miss McNaughton from the College of Education. I am extremely fond of children but I find them more enjoyable as individuals rather than as a group. At all events, I found myself teaching Analytic Geometry in a classroom while in an adjacent classroom the Nursery School was carrying on normal activities. If you have never tried to teach mathematics in a room next to which preschool children are marching around to piano music, let me congratulate you and suggest that you make very effort to keep it that way.

As for the days in Y, I will say very little since this is comparatively modern history but one early picture may be of interest. The Departmental Office was then where the Undergraduate Office is now located and in season we used to sell Girl Scout cookies. My office (I was Department Head at this time) was where Shep is now located [presently Elizabeth Stecher] though I do not know if it is the same desk. This was before the Department had started its meteoric expansion and [Chair] Brit [Kirwan] will be interested that I could hold a meeting of the professorial staff (all three ranks) in my office and only bring in two extra chairs. But even then it wasn't generally possible to get them all to agree on anything. I guess it must be the mathematical mind!

In closing let me thank the Department again for your kindness to me especially during the last three years when I have been something less than a major asset to you. I may say that the kindness has extended not only to the Department members but to the secretarial staff and the students who have been very tolerant and helpful. I certainly wish you good luck for the future.

James Hummel Reminiscences, 1992

The Sixties: anti-war movements, counter culture, tear gas, hippies, drugs,... However, even it if the culteral ferment were not occuring, it was still a period of immense upheaval for our Mathematics Department. From 1958 to 1970, the Mathematics Department grew from about ten to nearly ninety tenured faculty. There were several years when fifteen or more tenure track faculty were hired. The reputation of the Department grew as our young faculty became well-known in the mathematical community. The miracle was that the essential character of the department as a congenial group of scholars, willing to argue out new ideas without excessive rancor, stayed the same.

The period of growth of the Department started with the hiring of Leon Cohen as Chairman in 1958. He came to use from NSF and seemed to know everyone of importance. He fought (surprisingly successfully) with the Administration on behalf of the Department and obtained new budget lines for faculty and graduate assistants to fund the growth. He hired young people of great research promise. Most of the new faculty turned out to be excellent teachers also, so the Department's teaching was not slighted.

Leon Cohen was hired as "Head" of the Mathematics Department, but he almost immediately insisted on being called "Chairman." It took years before the (Campus) Administration finally agreed to this more democratic point of view. Although he operated on a much more autocratic level than we are used to today, he created the Policy Committee and set up a number of standing rules for the Department to follow with regard to faculty participation in the governance of the department. He was instrumental in developing the Mathematics Department's part of the "Centers of Excellence" proposal to NSF. He also made sure the State committed itself ot keep up the improvements when the NSF money ran out.

Lean was acutally the second choice of the search committee. Our first choice (Busemann from USC) was not hired since the Administration was unwilling to pay the salary of $12,500 a year that he wanted. When Leon accounced his retirement from the Chairmanship as of June 1969, a search committee selected Paul Halmos as his replacement, but again there were difficulties. He was unable to obtain the commitments form the Administration that he felt were necessary and we had to select someone quickly from inside to be the Chair until a "real" Chairman could be found.

When Jack Goldhaber took over in July 1968, none of us knew much about him, other than that he was willing to take the job. We certainly had no idea whether or not he might be a good administrator. Jack Goldhaber surprised everyone. He overcommitted the Department every spring, but came out in the black by fall by obtaining more money from the University if necessary. Jack continued the policy of hiring only the best available people and his much more democratic way of running the department sat well with the times. Faculty meeting sometimes ran long as he was careful to make sure that every opinion was heard. He often seemed to agonize over decisions, but when the time came, he made the decision firmly, and it was almost always the right one for the good of the department.

Two anecdotes might helpo bracket this period in the Department's history. In 1959 a father called me to ask if I would talk with this Junior High School aged son, who was interested in mathematics. Sure enough, young Charles Fefferman was surprisingly advanced, even knowing some calculus. In 1960, his mother drove him to the University every day to take a math course and a physics course. We tried him in a regular calculus course, but quickly moved him to John Brace's sophomore honors course. In 1962 he formally entered the University. Regulations of the University required a high school diploma or equivalency certificate (and one had to be 21 years of age ot apply for the equivalency certificate) for admission. Leon Cohen spent a great deal of time and effort in getting a special action by the Board of Regents for his admission. They required that Fefferman be interviewed by the different departments. Everyone agreed that the was ready for the University, except for the psychiatrist from the counselling center who predicted disaster. His advice was thankfully ignored. During his three years here Fefferman took mostly graduate courses in math. The faculty treated him with respect and helped him with his mathematical education. He was certaily our most illustrious undergraduate and the Department had a feeling of pride in its part in his development.

In my view, the incident which closed this era in the Department's life was l'affair Adams. Bill Adams had been put up by the Department for promotion to Full Professor. In the summer of 1971, word came from the Administration that he had been turned down. Jack Goldhaber was in England for the summer and a young Brit Kirwan was acting chairman (supposedly a sinecure during the summer). When pressed, the Administration admitted that the only reason it had for turning Adams down was that he had signed a letter to the Diamondback which they interpreted as saying that he would not obey orders of the University if he did not agree with them. With further negotiations, the Administration agreed to the promotion if Bill Adams would sign a statement agreeing to abide by University directives. Bill refused because the University did not require all faculty to sign such a statement (and he says he probably wouldn't have signed it even then). Brit Kirwan showed an amazingly deft hand at handling the problem locally while Jack Goldhaber was on the phone from England almost daily. Finally Jack resigned and Brit told the adminstration that they probably could not find any member of the department who would agress to Chair the Department. The Administration backed down, Goldhaber agreed to be Chairman again, and Bill Adams became a Full Professor. This was the turning point in the relations between the Department and the Administration. The Department received far more respect from then on. It was also the turning point in the lives of Brit Kirwan and Jack Goldhaber. Brit became the overwhelming choice when a new Chairman was selected and Jack Goldhaber was tapped to become Acting Dean of the Graduate School a few years later. (Bill Adams considers it an imporant event in his life also.)

Peter Wolfe Reminiscences, 1993

The story of the Mathematics Department in the nineteen seventies must focus on the two men who led it during that period: Jack Goldhaber and Brit Kirwan. I don't think it's getting ahead of the story to say that, of course, Brit went on to become President of the University, while Jack, his mentor, is retiring from the university this year after a stint as Acting Provost. The basic difference between the two men is this: Jack is an idealist whose idealism is tempered by pramatism, while Brit is a pragmatist whose pragmatism is tempered by idealism.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Jack was passionate in his desire to build a first-rate math department. Although our department is famous for being a very democratic institution, Jack was not above a little arm-twisting to get the department to go along with one of his schemes. One day he came into my office and said, "Pete, I'm thinking of doing `A'. What do you think?" This was the first I'd heard on the subject. I mulled it over for approximately 46.5 milliseconds and replied, "Well ... Uh ... Have you considered `B'?" At this, Jack admitted that `B' was an interesting possibility and then spent the next five minutes explaining why `B' was perhaps the worst idea he'd ever heard. When he was done I said that I had to admit that `A' sounded pretty good to me. At this Jack thanked me for my sage advice and left the office.

Jack's legacy in the department is the remarkable group of people he hired, some of whom are still here, while others have gone on to greater glory elsewhere. In the former group, I might mention Ron Lipsman, Sut Antman, Scott Wolpert, Becky Herb, Henry King and Steve Kudla while the latter group includes Larry Goldstein, Tai-Ping Liu, Alice Change and Paul Yang. These people have done much to raise the stature of Maryland in the eyes of the mathematical world.

When Jack stepped down in 1977, it was a foregone conclusion that his mantle would pass to the heir-apparent Brit Kirwan. Although the face Brit usually presents to the world is one of affability, make no mistake about it, he can be very tough when the situation demands it. As Chairman, he fought and won two bruising bureaucratic battles (that I am aware of). As the result of one, the department was finally able to hire a full-time business manager (to oversee a multi-million dollar budget). The other pitted him against the Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs over a personnel matter. He not only prevailed but eventually took over her job! During his four years as Chairman, Brit was able to hire such luminaries as Larry Washington, Don Zagier, Anatoly Katok, Craig Evans, Dan Rudolph and Jonathan Rosenberg.

Brit moved the department in other ways, to be precise, about a quarter mile to the west. In 1980-81, we were relocated to the Bureau of Mines building [presently Microbiology] while the math building was undergoing a long-planned renovation.

Shortly before our return to the math building in the summer of 1981, it was announced that Brit was appointed Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. Somewhat ironically, the first event held in our new colloquium room was the department's farewell to Brit. Jack Goldhaber returned as iterim chairman while a new chairman (John Osborn) was chosen but it was clear that with the return to the math building, an important chapter in our history had ended.