Celebratio Mathematica

[Ed­it­or’s note: We give here some high­lights of Mort Brown’s ca­reer as a re­search math­em­atician. The read­er can also read his cur­riculum vitae as a PDF doc­u­ment (see link at the up­per right). A com­plete list of his aca­dem­ic works can be found on the Works page of this volume.]

Mor­ton Brown is Ar­thur F. Thu­mau Pro­fess­or of at the Col­lege of Let­ters and Sci­ence, and re­tired Pro­fess­or of Math­em­at­ics at the Uni­versity of Michigan. He re­ceived his Ph.D. from the Uni­versity of Wis­con­sin. He has writ­ten nu­mer­ous pa­pers in to­po­logy and dy­nam­ic­al sys­tems. He has been a Sloan Fel­low, a Nav­al Re­search Fel­low and a Na­tion­al Sci­ence Found­a­tion fel­low at the In­sti­tute for Ad­vanced Study in Prin­ceton. He has had vis­it­ing ap­point­ments at Cam­bridge Uni­versity, Uni­versity of War­wick, Uni­versity of Cali­for­nia (San Diego), Im­per­i­al Col­lege (Lon­don), The Math­em­at­ic­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Berke­ley), and the Uni­versity of Wis­con­sin.

He and Barry Mazur shared the Amer­ic­an Math­em­at­ic­al So­ci­ety’s fourth Os­wald Veblen Prize in geo­metry.

He has served on the gov­ern­ing boards of the Uni­versity of Michigan’s Rack­ham Gradu­ate School, its Col­lege of Lit­er­at­ure Sci­ence and Arts, Board of In­ter­col­legi­ate Ath­let­ics, and the Uni­versity Fac­ulty Sen­ate and as chair of the Fac­ulty Gov­ernance Ex­ec­ut­ive Com­mit­tee. He served as the De­part­ment of Math­em­at­ics As­so­ci­ate Chair for Edu­ca­tion and on the policy board of the Uni­versity’s Cen­ter for Re­search on Learn­ing and Teach­ing.

Pro­fess­or Brown was an ori­gin­al mem­ber of the MAA-AMS “CRAFTY” sub-com­mit­tee con­cerned with cal­cu­lus re­form and served again 2006–2008. He has served on nu­mer­ous MAA, AMS and NSF re­view and over­sight boards in­clud­ing the teach­er edu­ca­tion pro­grams “Montana Sys­tem­ic Ini­ti­at­ive” (STEP), and the “State of Louisi­ana Sys­tem­ic Ini­ti­at­ive” (LA­CEPT).

He was Prin­cip­al In­vest­ig­at­or for an NSF grant which im­ple­men­ted the well-known cal­cu­lus re­form pro­gram at the Uni­versity of Michigan, and he served as Dir­ect­or of the pro­gram dur­ing its form­at­ive years.

Re­cent ad­di­tion­al K–12 re­lated activ­it­ies:
Con­sult­ant for Pro­ject GRAD pro­gram (K1–K6), Hou­s­ton, Texas (2007).
Michigan Math­em­at­ics and Sci­ence Sum­mer School for high school stu­dents (2005–2009).
Con­sult­ant for the “In­quiry Based Learn­ing” pro­ject of the Edu­ca­tion­al Ad­vance­ment Found­a­tion (2007–).

Un­der­gradu­ate sub­jects taught at Uni­versity of Michigan:
Cal­cu­lus 1, Cal­cu­lus 2, Cal­cu­lus 3, Ad­vanced Cal­cu­lus
Lin­ear al­gebra 1, Lin­ear al­gebra 2, Hon­ors lin­ear al­gebra
Fi­nite math­em­at­ics
Ab­stract al­gebra
To­po­logy
Dif­fer­en­tial equa­tions
Math­em­at­ics of com­bin­at­or­i­al games
Prin­ciples of ana­lys­is
Prob­ab­il­ity and stat­ist­ics