From this picture, can you guess what field of math is my specialty?
The answer is Topology.
It is said that a topologist is a mathematician who can't tell his coffee cup from his donut, and that is pretty accurate. Take a blob of modeling clay and shape it into a donut; now push, pull, smash, squish, or whatever, without breaking or tearing the donut or eliminating the hole, to reshape it into a coffee cup. Whenever it is possible to reshape an object in such a manner into another object, a topologist says the two objects are equivalent. So. the labels in the picture are valid (but I'm not going to try to drink coffee out of that cup!!).
Here's another favorite object of topologists. It has only one edge and only one side.
I taught high school math in Beltsville, MD (a suburb of Washington, DC) from 1970 to 1975. While living there, I did volunteer work manning an information desk at the Smithsonian. That was really fun - I got to learn a lot, and meet many interesting people.
In 1983 I joined the mathematics faculty of Tennessee Technological University, and I am currently an associate professor of mathematics there. From 1986 until 1998 I served as Mathematics Department Chairperson, but I am delighted to have resumed full-time duties in teaching and research in the Fall of 1998. Tennessee Tech is located in Cookeville, TN, in the heart of the beautiful Upper Cumberland region of Middle Tennessee.
I am an avid Florida Gator
fan (especially
football)
and a C-SPAN junkie. But my great passion these
days is genealogy. I have a
Genealogy Page where you can find a lot of information about
my family history. If you think you might be related, please contact
me. I have found several new cousins this way, and that is always
a pleasant surprise.
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