IU Annual Mathematics Awards Presentation

At 2:30 this afternoon, the awards honoring undergraduates, graduates, and faculty were handed out to several promising scholars, instructors, and veteran faculty. Samuel Vaughn, graduate student, is seen here walking off with the Joseph & Frances Morgan Swain Fellowship.

Alternating between the Math and Astronomy Departments, this fellowship was funded in memory of Joseph Swain by his widow. Swain was a key figure in the early development of the IU Math Department.
And what have we here? Why, it's the Indiana University Trustees' Teaching Award winners Bob Glassey, Russ Lyons [not pictured], and Larry Moss. And next to him in the white trousers is Michael Larsen, this year's Rothrock Mathematics Faculty Teaching Award Winner. Congratulations gentlemen!

Incoming Math Chair Jim Davis (far right) recounts their accomplishments and showers them with praise. By the way,
Professor Peter Sternberg leaned over during the ceremonies and mentioned to me that Professor Glassey was bitten by a brown recluse spider, or Loxosceles reclusa, a couple weeks ago, and apparently it was no trivial matter.

And who are these go-getters? It's the Rothrock Teaching Award winners for Associate Instructors. These mathematics students happen to be excellent mathematics instructors. Well done people.

Today's Math Mystery - Who is Junxiong Xia? (夏 俊雄)

Sometime Sunday afternoon or evening, April 23, an unknown person dropped the great Manfredo P. Do Carmo's "Differential Geometry of Curves and Surfaces" in the library drop box. The funny thing is, it's not a Swain Hall Library book, it belongs to someone. Since Joe Stampfli had just returned a few items near it, we thought it was his, but he claims it's not.

Carefully penned on the inside cover is 夏 俊雄.

Who will be the first to step forward and claim this book? If nobody does, I would like to add it to the collection. We have a copy, but Swain Hall Library actually has been missing a 2nd library copy of it since 2004.

End of Semester, Returning books, Need Help?

Are you hanging on to books, renewing them, because there are too many and they're too heavy to haul back to the library? If you're no longer using material but continue to keep it in your office, please give us a call, or send an e-mail and we'll send one of our staff to your office to bring books back.

855-3437 or libswain@indiana.edu

IU South Bend's Maureen Kennedy helps Bloomington Swain

Eric Rowell, one of IU's VIGRE Post docs from Math came in yesterday lamenting the fact that pages 3 & 4 of Fulton's Representation Theory: A First Course, had been ripped out. Muffled gasps could be heard throughout the Reference Room, work stopped, and we all observed a moment of silence.
A quick check in IUCAT and lo and behold, IU South Bend also holds a copy of this book. Quickly navigated to the South Bend Library web site. Who would help us? We put all our chips on one Maureen Kennedy, Interlibrary Loan. After a quick e-mail exchange, Ms. Kennedy found the book, scanned the pages, and our problem has been solved. Thank you Maureen.
In the meantime Eric Rowell recently announced that he has been offered a position at Texas A&M in the Math Department. Good luck Eric - make sure you return all your books before packing.

New Multidisciplinary title on Visualization

Who will be the first to get their hands on this hot new book? Information Scientists, mathematicians, programmers, biologists, there's something for everyone here. These papers are from a workshop held in Germany in 2005 and cover topics related to medical imaging, large data visualization, unstructured mesh processing for visualization, flow visualization, and so on. The contributors are from national laboratories, universities, and other facilities across the globe. This goes on display May 1, but if you need any papers from it or would just like to have a look, come by Swain Hall.

4 page TABLE OF CONTENTS pdf

New Books Go on Display One Day Late - Routines Disrupted

For those of you who religiously check the New Book Shelf every two weeks, I have an important announcement. We put out the new books yesterday, on schedule, however, because we received 39 additional new books in the mail this morning, I went ahead and added these a day late to this particular cycle. It seems silly to put them all on a cart behind the desk, wait until May, when classes are almost over, then display them in order to adhere to the procedure.

So, have a look, there are a couple really good ones time...the Lisa Randall "Warped Passages" is here, Gnedenko's 2005 "Theory of Probability" is here..."Multiple Aspects of DNA and RNA from Biophysics to Bioinformatics" arrived. We had to put these out. They're good - have a look before they're interlibrary loaned out of the state to universities that have been more aggressive in cutting their collections budget.

What do the two moons of Mars look like?

In March we examined what Mars looks like, and we've seen what an artist thought Mars looked like back in the 1920s, but what do the two moons Phobos (Fear) and Deimos (Dread) look like?
Here they are.
These are NASA photos and part of the Wikimedia Commons.

Text Bite, Vol. 1, #4

"...the EPA had incorporated 'last-minute opinions and edits' by the White House Office of Management and Budget that 'circumvented the entire peer review process." [White House changes were] "...very close to some of the letters written by some of the trade associations"

Bart Ostro
Epidemiologist
2006 Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee
Commenting on recent, new EPA Air Pollution Rules on Fine Particulate Matter (less than 2.5 micrometers).

Behold! IU's Simon Hall, the New Multidisciplinary Science Building

It has been called "the unifying hub" for life sciences research at IU. The view on the top was taken when I stood at the north entrance to Jordan Hall and look straight west. The other view I'm standing just outside Rawles Hall looking north east. I think they've done a good job fitting this in with the other stalwart, beautiful limestone buildings on this side of campus.

Text Bite, Vol. 1, #3 Definitions

"A Mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems."

Focus on Florian Cajoli, Mathematician / Physicist

This book (2 vol. set) came out in 1928-29 and is one of three major books Cajoli published in his life time.
QA 21 .C16, downstairs in the Swain Hall Library. There are a few pictures of Cajoli on the web. I like this particular one, not with a mortarboard or chalk in hand, but as one of several baseball players on the University of Colorado (1889-1918) faculty baseball team.

A History of Mathematical Notations is not simply a book about mathematical notations and their meanings, it's a history book about civilizations and how people made sense of things mathematically. It is available now as a Dover reprint in one volume, but Swain has the originals and they're fine books.

Focus on R GRAPHICS T385 M9 2006

We have a high opinion of R over here these days. Why? Well, it's open source software for statistical analysis and graphics, and we're crazy about open source software. University of Aukland's Paul Murrell has authored this recent R Graphics book that we just picked up for the library. The book describes the graphics system in R, and focuses on the facilities R provides to produce publication-quality diagrams and plots. There's a section in the preface describing what this book is not about, it's "not about which sort of plot is appropriate for a particular sort of data, nor does it contain guidelines for correct graphical presentation." (vi) There are plenty of books and journal articles on that topic as well, but don't look for it in Murrell's R Graphics. For people new to R, this book is recommended for an overview of the graphics system, but it is also for intermediate and advanced R users. At the end of the preface *This manuscript was generated on a Fedora Core 1 Linux system using the LATEX document preparation system, Friedrich Leisch's Sweave package, several of the GNU software tools, and of course R.

Meredith Saba offered Yellowstone Internship

Meredith Saba, SLIS Merit Scholar and Swain Hall Library's current SLIS Graduate Assistant, was recently offered the Yellowstone National Park Research Library Internship for Summer 2006! Meredith is the President of the Student Chapter of InSLA (Special Libraries Association), and is a seasoned paddler and raft guide (most recently on the Ocoee River). Meredith (pictured here at Multnomah Falls, Oregon over 2006 Spring Break) received her Bachelor's in Chemistry from Ursinus College, PA, and is an intrepid snowboarder in her spare time.
Whether she's at a workstation using Chemdraw 3D to model molecules, or outdoors getting some serious airtime on the slopes, Meredith is team player blazing new trails both inside and outside the library.

Congratulations Ms. Saba, and stay clear of the grizzlies!