My Search for Ramanujan by Ken Ono & Amir D. Aczel

Author:Ken Ono & Amir D. Aczel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

I enrolled in challenging math courses my senior year, and I made it a point to stand out. I sat in the front row. I did all the homework. I spoke up often in class. I still wasn’t passionate about the mathematics, but I enjoyed the newfound attention from my professors. I took one particularly challenging class from Professor Paul Sally, who was known as the “Pirate Professor” because of his towering figure, colorful personality, and eye patch.

Sally suffered from adult-onset diabetes, and his body slowly betrayed him over the twenty-five years that I knew him. He died unexpectedly on December 20, 2013. By the time I was a student in his analysis class in 1988, he had lost the use of his left eye, whence the eye patch. Later, he would lose the use of his legs, first one, then the other, being finally left wheelchair-bound as a double amputee. In the last years of his life, he was almost blind. Despite all of his health problems, he was a dominant figure with a booming voice at UChicago. He had a take-no-prisoners approach to undergraduate mentoring. He sensed that there was something in me that needed nurturing, and he was there to help me find my way.

“Pirate Professor” Paul Sally (photo by Sharat Ganapati)

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