1993 K-State Undergraduate Lecture Series in Mathematics
Lectures by two distinguished visiting mathematicians, a K-State mathematician, and five alumni were the highlights of our Undergraduate Lecture Series at Kansas State University during the 1993-1994 academic year.In the fall of 1993, Dennis Sullivan, a world famous mathematician from the City University of New York, gave an outstanding undergraduate lecture on Interesting mathematical structures in the Euclidean plane. In the spring of 1994, Wistar Comfort, a renowned author and mathematician from Wesleyan University, visited Kansas State and gave an undergraduate mini-course on The arithmetic of infinite cardinals. Comfort's mini-course was very well received, attracting visitors from Lawrence, Topeka, and Wichita.
Francis Fung, a 1992 K-State mathematics alumnus, delivered a lecture entitled Sailing down the river of 3x2 + 6xy - 5y2. Francis is now working on a Ph.D. at Princeton University. Gary Schmidt, a 1971 K-State mathematics alumnus, gave a presentation entitled Why math - a business approach. Gary received a Ph.D. in education from Kansas State in 1973. He is now teaching mathematics at Washburn University and runs Business Systems Resources, Inc., a computer consulting firm in Berryton. Mitch Neilsen, a 1988 K-State mathematics alumnus, gave a presentation entitled Mathematics and distributed computing systems. Mitch also earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. in computer science from K-State. He now teaches computer science at Oklahoma State University. Susan Arnoldy Blake, a 1984 K-State mathematics alumna gave a presentation entitled A mathematician in the environmental world. Susan is a statistician at CH2M Hill, an international environmental consulting company in Denver. She performs statistical consulting for environmental impact studies, human health risk assessment, and ecological risk assessments. Before CH2M Hill, Susan worked for eight years for Martin Marietta astronautics in Denver. She recently graduated from the University of Colorado with a master's degree in biometrics. Austin Melton gave a presentation entitled Applications in a real life of mathematics. Austin received an M.S. in 1974 and a Ph.D. in 1980, both in mathematics and both from Kansas State University. He was a computer science faculty member over a ten year span at Weber State, Wichita State, and Kansas State, and he now is the Head of the department of computer science at Michigan Technological University. Louis Crane gave a presentation entitled Reminiscences of Stephen Hawking - a pedestrian tour through quantum gravity. Louis is on the mathematics faculty at Kansas State.