I grew up in Pittsburgh and received my undergraduate degree at Harvard in 1972 and my Ph.D. in math at Berkeley in 1976. I taught at the University of Pennsylvania for 5 years before coming to Maryland in 1981, and have been a full professor in the Mathematics Department since 1985. Since 2008 I have held the Ruth M. Davis Professorship, honoring one of the first women to get a Ph.D. from the Maryland math department. My research interests combine the three basic areas of mathematics: algebra, geometry, and analysis, and I enjoy teaching all sorts of mathematical subjects at all sorts of levels. I am for the most part a "pure" mathematician, though some of my work is also in mathematical physics.
I am one of the managing editors of a major mathematics journal, the Journal of K-Theory, and I have served on the editorial boards of many other journals. I've helped write a number of undergraduate textbooks (on the use of mathematical software) and have also written two advanced graduate textbooks. In addition I once served as Chair of the committee for the American Mathematical Society to select the winner of their annual prize for mathematical exposition. These experiences have given me a chance to study many examples of mathematical writing, ranging from the masterful to the abysmal, and thus have prompted my interest in the subject of this course.
My wife is a geophysicist at NASA-Goddard, and we have a son (a student here at Maryland) and a high-school-aged daughter. My interests outside of mathematics include playing the piano, trying to stay in shape, and reading (of all sorts).