Hartley Rogers, Jr

Hartley Rogers, Jr. is a mathematician who has worked in the field of recursion theory. The Rogers equivalence theorem is named after him. He is a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his PhD in mathematics from Princeton in 1952, under the supervision of Alonzo Church. His contemporaries are listed on the Mathematics Department web page.

Prof. Rogers has been involved in many scholarly extracurricular activities at MIT, including running SPUR (Summer Program in Undergraduate Research) for MIT undergraduates, overseeing the mathematics section of RSI (Research Sciences Institute) for advanced high school students, and coaching the MIT Putnam exam team from 1990 to the time of writing (2005). This includes the years 2003, 2004, when MIT won for the first time since 1979. He also runs a seminar called [http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/18-S34Fall-2004/CourseHome 18.S34: Mathematical Problem Solving] at MIT for freshmen.

Prof. Rogers is also known within the MIT undergraduate community for having developed a multivariable calculus course ( [http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/18-022Fall-2005/CourseHome 18.022: Multivariable Calculus with Theory] ) with the explicit goal of providing a firm mathematical foundation for the study of physics. In 2005 he announced that he will no longer be teaching the course himself, but it is likely that it will continue to be taught in a similar manner in the future. Prof. Rogers will be remembered for his witty mathematical comments during lectures as well as his tradition of awarding Leibniz Cookies and Fig Newtons to top performers in his class.

Quotes

* "That was a horrible misconception...and your misconception is even more horrible."

* "That would be like my saying, 'All unicorns in the Boston Zoo are purple.' That's true even though there are no unicorns in the Boston Zoo, because if you were to find one there, it would be purple." [See vacuous truth.]

* "What's incorrect is your wrong idea... Maybe you don't have the wrong idea. Maybe I'm fighting a strong person."

References

* Hartley Rogers, Jr., "The Theory of Recursive Functions and Effective Computability", MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-68052-1 (paperback), ISBN 0-07-053522-1 (textbook)

External links

* [http://math.mit.edu MIT Mathematics Department website]
* [http://www-tech.mit.edu/V112/N55/rogers.55n.html Rogers Runs for President, Loses] - The Tech article on Rogers' political debacle (see also [http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/1992/rogers_pres/hartley_0063.gifthe picture] ).
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* [http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1078225 The Hartley Rogers Fencing Story] - A hack (prank) involving masked swordsmen in his classroom