News

Math Department Awards Day Ceremony

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We gathered at this afternoon in the Andre Schenker Lecture Hall to celebrate the accomplishments of our students. Families and friends of students, as well as staff and faculty gathered for the happy occasion, with a light reception of refreshments prior to it. Awards were presented to both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as a visiting non-degree student. The Pi Mu Epsilon induction ceremony also took place and was one one of the largest class of initiates into our Connecticut Alpha Chapter led by Chapter Advisor, Professor Tom Roby. For a full list of all of this year’s awardees, please visit our Student Awards page.

(Photo credit: Monique Roy)

Professor Guozhen Lu elected AAAS Fellow

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We are delighted with the news that our colleague Professor Guozhen Lu  has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS),  one of the world’s largest general scientific societies. As the AAAS notes, election to be a Fellow is “a distinguished lifetime honor within the scientific community.” Professor Lu  is one of  seven elected as Fellow of the AAAS in Mathematics. The society is celebrating  the 150th anniversary of the AAAS Fellows Program this year.

Professor Lu joined the UConn Mathematics faculty in 2016. He is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society (class of 2018) and two-time recipient of the Simons Fellow award. He is the author of over 200 scholarly works and serves in major editorial roles, including as Editor in Chief of the journal Advanced Nonlinear Studies and Editor in Chief of the De Gruyter Studies in Mathematics.

For more, please see the AAAS announcement and UConn Today.

Math Department Awards Day Ceremony on 4/19

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We gathered at three thirty in the afternoon at Schenker Auditorium to celebrate the accomplishments of our students. Families and friends of students, as well as staff and faculty were present for the happy occasion. A good spread of snacks greeted the attendees. Rachel D’Antonio was the leader of ceremonies, introducing each award. There was a large cohort of students inducted into the Pi Mu Epsilon society, with solemn recitation of the pledge, led by Professor Tom Roby. Awards were made to both undergraduate and graduate students. 

In Memoriam: William Wickless

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It is with great sadness that we inform you of the passing of William Wickless, Professor Emeritus of the Mathematics Department.  Retired members of the department and those who have been in the department many years knew him as a cheerful colleague. He served in a role of Associate Head for the department and played a significant  role in strengthening our graduate program.  

Please see this beautiful obituary: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/william-j-wickless-obituary?id=54142160

In addition, below are some words from two retired colleagues:

Jim Hurley:

MathSciNet lists Bill Wickless as author or co-author (with 15 collaborators) of 63 publications on group theory, associative rings and algebras, commutative algebra, and two on history/biography and general topics. The Mathematics Genealogy Project page shows that he was a doctoral student of Ross Beaumont at the University of Washington, and advised four doctoral students during his more than three decades as an active member of our faculty. (Those students: Jae-myung Chung of Seoul National University, the late Pat Goeters of Auburn University, Paul Budney and the late Reiff Lafleur of Troy University.).

Bill’s conscientious devotion to clear exposition and impressive gift for constructing patient explanations of subtleties made him an excellent and popular instructor, and culminated in the graduate algebra text that he produced – as I recall, as an emeritus faculty member. I had the privilege of reviewing that work as he produced it, and was greatly impressed by its engaging style and excellent readability.  

By no means to minimize his distinguished career as a productive colleague and consummate professional, the foregoing is not what comprises most of my remembrance of Bill. Rather, I always saw him primarily as a most congenial and very likable colleague, one of my closest friends in the department. I was not alone in that outlook. His welcoming nature led to many fruitful visits here by fellow algebraists, including Roger and Sylvia Wiegand of the University of Nebraska, Adolf Mader from the University of Hawaii and Kevin C. O’Meara from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

Bill had a marvelous sense of humor, a real zest for life and an unusual gift for telling engrossing stories that enlivened any gathering he joined. A favorite example from my own family: when we hosted the Wicklesses for dinners, our two (then young) children would always sit at the top of the stairs and listen for his contributions to our conversations. As one of them put if after hearing his hilarious account of a wild ride with a Mercedes-Benz salesman years before in Southern California, “Dr. Wickless tells the best stories!”  

His lively contributions to emeritus-faculty gatherings have been sorely missed, as his disabling health problems kept him confined to the Mansfield Rehab Center. He truly was an irreplaceable part of our lives at UConn, and Cecile and I will miss him greatly

 Sarah Glaz:

Bill Wickless was a good colleague and a loyal friend for many years. Bill Wickless and Chuck Vinsonhaler brought me to UConn. I remember very fondly the first few years in the department when the three of us ran our own mini-algebra seminar trying to find joint research projects in the intersection of our respective areas of interest. We ended up collaborating on several papers and sharing many lunches at all the restaurants on our campus. He will be much missed.