Annual newsletter: Summer 2004

Letter from Morris Kalka, Chair January 2005

Dear Alumni, Colleagues and Friends,

I want to thank you for the interest that the first issue of the newsletter generated. We heard from a number of alums who have been out of touch for many years. Keep those messages coming.

There is a lot of news to report about the department. Laszlo Fuchs has been a leading member of the department for almost 40 years, having emigrated from Hungary in the mid sixties. He is probably known to everyone reading this letter. It is with mixed feeling that I report that Laszlo has retired as of July 2004. Laszlo has been a leading researcher in algebra, particularly in abelian groups where he literally wrote the book on the subject, a dedicated teacher at all levels and a wonderful colleague. He has been a remarkable role model to generations of young mathematicians at Tulane and elsewhere, maintaining his research program and activity over career that started in the late forties. We wish him and his family well. Laszlo has assured us that he will continue to be a presence in the department; he will just no longer teach.

We added a new faculty member, Michelle Lacey, in the Fall 2003 semester. Michelle is a statistician who completed her Ph.D. at Yale in 2003. Her work is in statistical genetics, a growing area of both theoretical and applied research. In addition Tai Ha, a commutative algebraist joined the department in the Fall 2004 semester. Tai completed his Ph.D. at Queens University in Ontario in 2000 and has been a postdoc at Missouri since 2001, having spent the first year after his degree in his native Vietnam at the Institute of Mathematics in Hanoi.

Much of the news during the past year revolves around the department's VIGRE grant, which began on July 1, 2003 and will run for 5 years. This is supporting graduate student fellowships as well as four new postdocs who will be with us for three years. Each of them earned his Ph.D. in 2003.

They are John Alford, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Houston, Alex Barchechat, who comes from U.C. Davis, Zach Dietz from Iowa State, and Aaron Jaggard from University of Pennsylvania. As you can well imagine, with all of these younger people around there is lots of activity in the department these days.

As always, we look forward to hearing from old friends. Send news to Steve Rosencrans.

Morris Kalka
Department Chair

Mathematics Department Tulane University 6823 St. Charles Ave New Orleans, LA 70118 phone: (504) 865-5727 fax: (504) 865-5063

Last Updated: February 10, 2005