James Hummel Reminiscences, 1992

The Sixties: anti-war movements, counter culture, tear gas, hippies, drugs,... However, even it if the culteral ferment were not occuring, it was still a period of immense upheaval for our Mathematics Department. From 1958 to 1970, the Mathematics Department grew from about ten to nearly ninety tenured faculty. There were several years when fifteen or more tenure track faculty were hired. The reputation of the Department grew as our young faculty became well-known in the mathematical community. The miracle was that the essential character of the department as a congenial group of scholars, willing to argue out new ideas without excessive rancor, stayed the same.

The period of growth of the Department started with the hiring of Leon Cohen as Chairman in 1958. He came to use from NSF and seemed to know everyone of importance. He fought (surprisingly successfully) with the Administration on behalf of the Department and obtained new budget lines for faculty and graduate assistants to fund the growth. He hired young people of great research promise. Most of the new faculty turned out to be excellent teachers also, so the Department's teaching was not slighted.

Leon Cohen was hired as "Head" of the Mathematics Department, but he almost immediately insisted on being called "Chairman." It took years before the (Campus) Administration finally agreed to this more democratic point of view. Although he operated on a much more autocratic level than we are used to today, he created the Policy Committee and set up a number of standing rules for the Department to follow with regard to faculty participation in the governance of the department. He was instrumental in developing the Mathematics Department's part of the "Centers of Excellence" proposal to NSF. He also made sure the State committed itself ot keep up the improvements when the NSF money ran out.

Lean was acutally the second choice of the search committee. Our first choice (Busemann from USC) was not hired since the Administration was unwilling to pay the salary of $12,500 a year that he wanted. When Leon accounced his retirement from the Chairmanship as of June 1969, a search committee selected Paul Halmos as his replacement, but again there were difficulties. He was unable to obtain the commitments form the Administration that he felt were necessary and we had to select someone quickly from inside to be the Chair until a "real" Chairman could be found.

When Jack Goldhaber took over in July 1968, none of us knew much about him, other than that he was willing to take the job. We certainly had no idea whether or not he might be a good administrator. Jack Goldhaber surprised everyone. He overcommitted the Department every spring, but came out in the black by fall by obtaining more money from the University if necessary. Jack continued the policy of hiring only the best available people and his much more democratic way of running the department sat well with the times. Faculty meeting sometimes ran long as he was careful to make sure that every opinion was heard. He often seemed to agonize over decisions, but when the time came, he made the decision firmly, and it was almost always the right one for the good of the department.

Two anecdotes might helpo bracket this period in the Department's history. In 1959 a father called me to ask if I would talk with this Junior High School aged son, who was interested in mathematics. Sure enough, young Charles Fefferman was surprisingly advanced, even knowing some calculus. In 1960, his mother drove him to the University every day to take a math course and a physics course. We tried him in a regular calculus course, but quickly moved him to John Brace's sophomore honors course. In 1962 he formally entered the University. Regulations of the University required a high school diploma or equivalency certificate (and one had to be 21 years of age ot apply for the equivalency certificate) for admission. Leon Cohen spent a great deal of time and effort in getting a special action by the Board of Regents for his admission. They required that Fefferman be interviewed by the different departments. Everyone agreed that the was ready for the University, except for the psychiatrist from the counselling center who predicted disaster. His advice was thankfully ignored. During his three years here Fefferman took mostly graduate courses in math. The faculty treated him with respect and helped him with his mathematical education. He was certaily our most illustrious undergraduate and the Department had a feeling of pride in its part in his development.

In my view, the incident which closed this era in the Department's life was l'affair Adams. Bill Adams had been put up by the Department for promotion to Full Professor. In the summer of 1971, word came from the Administration that he had been turned down. Jack Goldhaber was in England for the summer and a young Brit Kirwan was acting chairman (supposedly a sinecure during the summer). When pressed, the Administration admitted that the only reason it had for turning Adams down was that he had signed a letter to the Diamondback which they interpreted as saying that he would not obey orders of the University if he did not agree with them. With further negotiations, the Administration agreed to the promotion if Bill Adams would sign a statement agreeing to abide by University directives. Bill refused because the University did not require all faculty to sign such a statement (and he says he probably wouldn't have signed it even then). Brit Kirwan showed an amazingly deft hand at handling the problem locally while Jack Goldhaber was on the phone from England almost daily. Finally Jack resigned and Brit told the adminstration that they probably could not find any member of the department who would agress to Chair the Department. The Administration backed down, Goldhaber agreed to be Chairman again, and Bill Adams became a Full Professor. This was the turning point in the relations between the Department and the Administration. The Department received far more respect from then on. It was also the turning point in the lives of Brit Kirwan and Jack Goldhaber. Brit became the overwhelming choice when a new Chairman was selected and Jack Goldhaber was tapped to become Acting Dean of the Graduate School a few years later. (Bill Adams considers it an imporant event in his life also.)