How I Became a Mathematician

Some of my earliest memories are of my Dad saying things like, “Sine squared plus cosine squared equals one.” Of course, it made absolutely no sense at the time, but I learned to appreciate his love and fascination with mathematics. He had a degree in engineering from the University of Colorado, had spent several years in California working for Shell Oil, converting back and forth between gallons and barrels of oil. My parents loved California, but he was obviously bored with his job at Shell. They were thinking of buying a new house when my Dad came home one day announced, “We are going back to Colorado.”

So I was born in Montrose and grew up on a farm in Oak Grove, about four miles west of Montrose. I developed an interest in music and started playing a baritone by the time I was in the fifth grade. Country schools didn’t have bands, so my Mother went out of her way to make it possible for me to play in bands in Montrose city schools. By the time I was a senior in High School, I had gone to summer music camps at Western State College in Gunnison and the University of Colorado in Boulder, played in honor bands at Colorado State College (now the University of Northern Colorado) in Greeley, and led the high school band as the drum major.

I had offers of music scholarships from both CU and CSC, but I still had an interest in mathematics. Finally, I decided to attend CSC and attempt to get a double major in music and mathematics. I expected to end up either as a high school band director or as a mathematics teacher.

So much for expectations. Since I had a music scholarship, I was expected to take lots of music, including several one-credit courses on individual instruments such as drums and string bass. Being a naive freshman from the hicks, I didn’t realize that it would be unusual to join a group like the Chorale Airs, so I went ahead and tried out. The group of 32 singers had been chosen to do a USO tour of Japan the previous summer. I tried out and was actually invited to join. This, plus all of the additional one-credit courses meant that there was no room in my schedule for any mathematics.

My sophomore year I did manage to squeeze in a sequence of calculus courses. I learned right away what studying was all about. I got a D on my first calculus exam but got an A on the second. My study companion went from an F to a B. We were officially members of the ‘up three club.’

Music was still a dominant part of my life. There were regional tours to high schools by both the concert band and Chorale Airs, and I played Paul Hindemith’s Trombone Sonata in a recital. There was the talk of another Chorale Airs trip to Japan during the summer after my sophomore year. All of my excitement came crashing down when I learned that there was funding for only 16 singers and I was selected to be one of those staying home. I was extremely disappointed and started looking at alternatives to music.

Carol had also been inspired as a child by our father’s love of mathematics, but she studied music instead and received a degree in performance at CU. After selling Baldwin pianos for a couple of years, she took some mathematics courses at the University of Denver and then transferred to New Mexico State University to study mathematics. During her fist year at NMSU, she suggested that I might want to spend the summer there studying mathematics. Sputnik had successfully launched in 1957 by Russia and the United States was frantically trying to catch up. NMSU had a grant from the National Science Foundation to improve secondary mathematics and were offering several mathematics courses for teachers during the summer of 1960. I took courses in abstract algebra and advanced calculus that summer.

After my junior year at NMSU, I returned to CSC for summer school and studied German, played in the summer band, and acted in a production of The Bartered Bride. After graduating from NMSU with a BS in Mathematics in 1962, I accepted a position there as a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA). The department head learned that I grew up on a farm, and I was assigned to teach Ag Math.

One of the other GTAs said that she had a schedule conflict and was looking for someone to substitute in her classroom. I offered to help, if she could arrange a date with her younger sister. I dated Linda and convinced her that I had money by taking her out to breakfast after loaning out my gas company credit card to a friend in exchange for cash.

In 1963 we got married and in 1964 we both received degrees in mathematics. Bob Wisner helped me get a one-year teaching position at Seattle University. We returned to NMSU after Janet was born in 1965, and I earned my PhD in mathematics in 1967. Brian was less than a year old when we moved into faculty apartments at Colorado State Univsity in the fall of 1967.