DIMACS Series in
Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science

VOLUME Thirty Four
TITLE: "African Americans in Mathematics"
EDITOR: Nathaniel Dean
Published by the American Mathematical Society


Ordering Information

This volume may be obtained from the AMS or through bookstores in your area.

To order through AMS contact the AMS Customer Services Department, P.O. Box 6248, Providence, Rhode Island 02940-6248 USA. For Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express orders call 1-800-321-4AMS.

You may also visit the AMS Bookstore and order directly from there. DIMACS does not distribute or sell these books.



PREFACE

The Second Conference for African-American Researchers in the Mathematical Sciences was held for three days at the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, June 26-28, 1996. It was organized by Nathaniel Dean and William A. Massey, both of Bell Laboratories, the research division of Lucent Technologies. The main goal of the conference was to highlight current research by African-American researchers and graduate students in mathematics, to strengthen the mathematical sciences by encouraging the increased participation of African-American and underrepresented groups, to facilitate working relationships between them, and to help cultivate their careers.

We had over 100 researchers and graduate students in attendance who were exposed to a variety of technical and cultural events. Participants were introduced to some of the major research centers in New Jersey: DIMACS at Rutgers University in Piscataway, the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, as well as Bell Laboratories and AT&T Labs who were both located in Murray Hill. Visiting all these research institutions was a first for most of the participants. There were twelve one-hour invited technical talks given by researchers spanning a variety of mathematical and scientific disciplines. At IAS we held group discussions, led by Fern Hunt (NIST) and Camille McKayle (Lafayette College) that focused on issues surrounding minority participation in mathematics, such as: The Career Life Cycle of an African-American Mathematician; Jobs of the Present, Jobs of the Future; The Public Image of Mathematics and Mathematicians in the African-American Community; and Affirmative Action. At Murray Hill, a select group of 17 graduate students presented their current research during the poster session where they interacted in smaller groups with conference attendees as well as researchers both from Bell Labs and AT&T Labs. This volume includes papers by the invited speakers and poster presenters as well as papers on issues related to African-American involvement in the mathematical sciences.

We wish to thank the staff at DIMACS for helping to organize and host this event. We thank DIMACS, the Sloan Foundation, and AT&T Labs for providing funds, and we thank DIMACS, Bell Labs, and IAS for the use of their facilities. We would also like to thank the participants of the conference, the authors, the anonymous referees, and Christine M. Thivierge of AMS for helping with this event and the preparation of this volume.

Nathaniel Dean and William A. Massey
March 1997


TABLE OF CONTENTS



Foreword							 ix

Preface								 xi

           Part I: Invited Research Talks

Chain decompositon theorems for ordered sets and other musings
    Jonathan David Farley					  3

Unimodality and the independent set numbers of matroids
    Carolyn R. Mahoney						 15

On achieving channels in a bipolar game
    Curtis Clark						 23

Discrete approximation of invariant measures for 
  multidimensional maps
    Walter M. Miller						 29

Some numerical methods for a maximum entropy problem
    Nathaniel Whitaker						 47

Hydrodynamic stability, differential operators and spectral 
  theory
    Isom H. Herron						 57

The role of Selberg's trace formula in the computation of 
  Casimir energy for certain Clifford-Klein space-times
    Floyd L. Williams						 69

Some dynamics on the irrationals
    Scott W. Williams						 83

           Part II: Poster Presentations

Finding elliptic curves defined over Q of high rank
    Garikai Campbell						107

Symplectic matrix structure in numerical integration
    Michael Keeve						111

A numerical algorithm for the computation of invariant circles
    Kossi Edoh							117

Classification of nilpotent orbits in symmetric spaces
    Alfred G. Noel						123

Evaluating texture measures for low-level features in color
  images of human skin
    Kori E. Needham						129

Lattice paths and RNA secondary structures
    Asamoah Nkwanta						137

Nuprl as a concurrent interactive theorem prover
    Roderick Moten						149

           Part III: Historical Articles

Yesterday, today and tomorrow
   Lee Lorch							157

The challenge of diversity
    Etta Z. Falconer						169

What next? A meta-history of black mathematicians
    Patricia Clark Kenschaft					183

A personal history of the origins of the National Association
  of Mathematicians' "Presentations by Recipients of Recent
  Ph.D.'s"
    Donald M. Hill						187

Dr. J. Ernest Wilkins, Jr.: The man and his works
    Nkechi Agwu and Asamoah Nkwanta				195  


Index Index of Volumes
DIMACS Homepage
Contacting the Center
Document last modified on October 28, 1998.