Thomas Cecil knew he wanted to be a mathematics professor ever since he was in high school.
He also knew that he wanted to teach at a small, liberal arts college where student-faculty interaction is highly prized, and interdisciplinary contact is not only easier compared to a large university, but strongly encouraged.
So several years after earning his Ph.D. in differential geometry from Brown University in 1973, he returned to his alma mater to teach the subject he loved, and to enjoy the hallmarks of a liberal arts institution.
“I really thought I got an excellent education here,” he says. “I also liked helping other people, and I liked mathematics and trying to explain it to other people. It was a pretty natural move.”
Cecil ’68, who has been a professor at Holy Cross for 31 years, will give this year’s Richard Rodino Lecture on the Aims of the Liberal Arts on Feb. 3 at 4 p.m. in the Rehm Library. The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Office of the Dean. The lecture series is devoted to the memory of Richard Rodino, formerly of the English department at Holy Cross. He played a central role in launching the College’s First-Year Program in 1992, which as of this year, has expanded to Montserrat.
The talk, titled “Geometry from Euclid to Poincaré: Mathematics as a Liberal Art,” will trace the history and development of non-Euclidean geometry and mention connections to other fields such as philosophy, art, and physics. It will be a non-technical talk intended for a general audience.
Euclid developed geometry in 300 B.C. and published his work titled Elements, the most successful textbook in the history of mathematics. The Greek mathematician used a certain postulate concerning parallel lines, explains Cecil. It wasn’t until about 2,000 years later that three other mathematicians — Janos Bolyai, C.F. Gauss, and Nikolai Lobachevsky — developed what is now referred to as non-Euclidean geometry, which uses a different postulate concerning parallel lines.
Cecil, who teaches courses in calculus, algebra, and geometry, hopes the audience will get two things out of his talk.
“They will learn about this discovery of non-Euclidean geometry which is an important event in intellectual history,” he says. “I hope they can also understand how mathematicians approach a problem and reason logically to prove theorems. I also want to mention relations between geometry and other fields in the liberal arts and sciences.”
Have Cecil’s more than three decades as a professor in the mathematics and computer science department lived up to his teenage dreams?
“It’s been a very fulfilling career,” he says. “I’ve had about 15 students who’ve worked with me doing research in the summer and then wrote an honors thesis, and I’ve really enjoyed that.”
Cecil has also excelled in his scholarly work. He has enjoyed a nearly uninterrupted 20-year history of external funding — most recently in the form of a four-year $132,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The research supported by these grants has resulted in three books with presses such as Cambridge University Press and Springer Verlag and a 76-page article in the Annals of Mathematics, the leading journal for mathematicians worldwide.
Timothy Austin, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the College, says Cecil has won praise from his students and his colleagues alike.
“He has worked closely with many students on independent research projects and personally exemplifies the kind of close engagement with students that the College values so highly.”
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