| Professor of Mathematics
Office: 229 Pardee Hall Phone: (610) 330-5275
Current Information Liz McMahon and I had a travelly summer: We attended conferences in Stockholm and France, and spent the month of June (2008) in Cambridge as fellows at the Isaac Newton Institute. I am co-organizing two conferences in memory of my Ph.D. advisor, Tom Brylawski. The first conference took place during the summer of 2008 in southern France. The second conference will take place Oct. 17-19 in Chapel Hill. All are welcome - let me know if you're interested in attending. Brief Bio:
I'm from Miami and I'm a lifelong Dolphins fan. Go ahead and laugh. I got
my BA from the University of Florida in 1977 and my Ph.D. from the University
of North Carolina in 1983. My mathematical interests include
combinatorics,
geometry and algebra. I love watching baseball and playing
softball.
I'm into rock climbing these days, and so are my wife and mathematical teammate, Liz
McMahon, and my two daughters, Rebecca and Hannah. Here are a few family pictures that don't stink too much. Mathematics Competitions I'm involved in the following math competitions: For a problem solving sample, check out the problem I published in the American Math Monthly (Problem 11218, solved in the April, 2008 issue). This forms the basis for a sequence in the on-line integer sequence catalog, and will soon be a major motion picture, I believe. There is probably a research problem suggested by all this.Publications Here is a list of published and current work. I've worked on matroids (representability questions), greedoids (extending the Tutte polynomial from graphs and matroids to greedoids), graph invariants & reliabilty, and geometric questions related to matroids (comparing matroid automorphism groups to Coxeter groups). Some reliability programs of Dave Eisenstat are available here and here . I'm also Lafayette's REU contact, so contact me if you're interested or have questions. As a sample of what my writing has degenerated into, here's an April Fool's article published by Math Horizons in 2007. By the way, if you're interested in the card game SET, Liz and I have a variation we call the End Game (with apologies to chess aficionados). You can read about it in English, Spanish, French or German here (Click on "Other ways to play SET"). Our other SET connection: Our daughter Hannah won the first national SET competition; she is the First SET Grand Master.
Teaching In the fall of 2008, I'll be teaching a seminar on Matroid Theory. I've taught a variety of math courses and one non-math course. The
math courses include Calculus, Numerical Analysis, Linear Algebra, Abstract
Algebra, Real Analysis, Combinatorics, Graph Theory, Symmetry & Geometry,
Discrete Structures, Operations Research and Statistics. The non-math course was a VaST
course on Intelligence Testing and other controversies in science. For some geometric fun, check out Euler line & nine point circle and Euler line & center of nine-point circle constructions in Cinderella. You can also play with the Toricelli point of a triangle. I've directed several senior theses in combinatorics, geometry and game theory (Lis Edwards did one on geometry) and independent studies on a variety of topics (three of which were with Katya Jager, Prince Chidyagwai and Rob McEwen).
Hillel Society I'm a co-advisor (with Liz
McMahon and Ethan Berkove) for Lafayette's very active Hillel Society. History professor Bob Weiner is the Hillel advisor and Jewish Chaplain at Lafayette. We have Shabbat dinners every Friday night - stop by at 6:00.
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Some treats at the Math Picnic |
| email: gordong@lafayette.edu |
