100 Years (and Counting) of Math Graduates

As many as 250 mathematicians will gather in Madison later this month to help the Department of Mathematics celebrate 100 years of graduate training.

Beginning May 22, scholars from around the country and beyond will be on campus for a two-day centennial conference marking the conferral of the first Ph.D. in math from the University of Wisconsin to Henry Freeman Stecker in 1897.

The conference, says Department Chair Richard Brualdi, is a celebration of one of the university’s oldest courses of instruction and one of its longest-standing and most distinguished graduate programs.

“Over the years, Wisconsin has had a great tradition in mathematics,” Brualdi says. “For a very long time we have been one of the biggest producers of Ph.D.s in mathematics.”

By the end of this summer, the department will have conferred 895 doctorates, he says. More than 20 people a year now receive doctorates from the UW department.

The early history of the department was greatly influenced by such figures as John W. Sterling, Charles Sumner Slichter and Edward Burr Van Vleck. By the turn of the century, the department was considered a national model, where an important emphasis was “the deliberate union of pure and applied mathematics …”

Even so, at the time three other doctorates were granted in the decade following the matriculation of Henry Stecker. The flow of doctorates increased substantially after World War I when granting them became a more important function of U.S. universities.

The conference, to be held in Van Vleck Hall, will feature plenary talks by current and former UW–Madison faculty and students, minisymposia and other contributed papers. A welcoming reception will be held May 21 at 7:30 p.m. in the ninth floor conference room of Van Vleck Hall, and a banquet is scheduled for May 23 in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union.