1998 Personal News

• At its meeting of March 27, 1998, the Board of Regents of the Texas A&M University System approved the promotion of Paulo Lima-Filho to Associate Professor with tenure.

• At a ceremony on May 7, 1998, Emil J. Straube received the Texas A&M University Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award in Research. The citation is available.

• At the meeting of the Texas A&M University Faculty Senate on May 11, 1998, Arthur Hobbs was elected Deputy Speaker for the 1998-1999 session.

• Grants awarded by the National Science Foundation:

• Laura M. Anderson, "Combinatorial Models for Manifolds and Vector Bundles," NSF grant number DMS-9803615, $81,544, August 1, 1998 to July 31, 2001.

• Harold P. Boas and Emil J. Straube, "Research and Education in Several Complex Variables," NSF grant number DMS-9801539, $309,366, June 1, 1998 to May 31, 2001.

• Huai-Dong Cao and Jian Zhou, "Singularities of the Kähler-Ricci Flow, Einstein 4-Manifolds and Seiberg-Witten Theory," NSF grant number DMS-9803549, $75,813, August 1, 1998 to July 31, 2001.

• Roger R. Smith and Corran Webster, "Studies in Operator Algebras and Operator Spaces," NSF grant number DMS-9801525, $120,658, June 1, 1998 to May 31, 2001.

• Xuejun Zhang, "Negative Norm Least-Squares Finite Element Methods for Electromagnetics," NSF grant number DMS-9805590, $65,000, July 1, 1998 to June 30, 2001.

• Fall 1998 recipients of Department of Mathematics awards for

• outstanding service

• Itshak Borosh

• Joe Kahlig

• Roger Smith

• outstanding teaching

• Sue Geller

• Greg Klein

• Emil Straube

• The award citations are available.

• Richard E. Ewing has been named Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics effective September 1, 1998.

• Rekha R. Thomas was named the 1998-1999 Montague Center for Teaching Excellence Scholar for the College of Science, Texas A&M University.

• Nikolai Mnëv of the Steklov Institute of Mathematics at St. Petersburg will be visiting the department for four months starting in October 1998. He is known for work at the intersection of combinatorics, algebraic geometry, and topology, including the "Universality Theorem" of matroid theory.

• Professor Emeritus Arthur H. Stroud, member of the department from 1971-1994, died Tuesday, November 17, 1998, aged 66. He had Parkinson's disease. Professor Stroud was known for his work on numerical integration and quadrature formulas. He published three books on the subject: Gaussian quadrature formulas (1966), Approximate calculation of multiple integrals (1971), and Numerical quadrature and solution of ordinary differential equations (1974). He has 45 publications in the Mathematical Reviews database.

• Professor James R. Boone, member of the department since 1968, died Sunday, December 6, 1998, aged 59, after a long struggle with complications of diabetes. He published two dozen research papers on topology, and he was especially known for his extensive activities in mathematics education. He won the Texas A&M University Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1982 and in 1988, and the Mathematical Association of America Texas Section Award for Distinguished College Teaching in 1993.