Robert Ramsay
Robert Ramsay was born on August 7, 1940, in Aberdeen, Washington.
He was the first of five children of William Milton Ramsay, career army NCO, and Marian Eugenie Ramsay, trained Registered Nurse(non-practicing).
Because of his father's army career, Ramsay's Public school education was spread among four states - Virginia, Arizona, Washington, and California. He graduated from Monterey Union High School in Monterey, California in June, 1958.
He received his B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Washington in June 1962. His degree was Cum Laude and he was elected in to the honorary fraternity Phi Beta Kappa. He traveled diagonally across the country to get his
M.S. in Mathematics at the University of Miami in January, 1964. He received his
Ph.D. in Mathematics, also from the University of Miami, in June 1967. His advisor was R. W. Bagley and his thesis was entitled "The Structure of Topological Groups".
Ramsay came to North Carolina State University as an Assistant Professor 1967 at a starting salary of $9500. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1986. Ramsay had a knack for and an interest in problem solving. He put this to good use by helping to coach students for the Putnam Competition from the early 1980's. Under his guidance, many of the students and teams did quite well.
He also ran the Wolfpack M6 Problem Contest from the Fall of 1989 to the Spring of 2001.
The Wolfpack M6 (Magnificent, Monthly, Mesmerizing, Money-making, Minatory, Mathematical) Problem Contest is posted each month on a bulletin board near the mathematics office. The winner receives a cash prize of one one-hundred thousandth of ONE MILLION DOLLARS.From 1989 to 1999 he did much of the work of making up problems for the annual High School Mathematics Competition for Wake County high school students that is administered by the Mathematics Department.
Ramsay has been an advocate of the use of the symbolic algebra program MAPLE in the classroom since its introduction on campus in the 1980's. He was awarded an Instructional Computing Grant for the first site license of MAPLE to be used in the teaching of Calculus in December 1986.
Ramsay became Director of Undergraduate Programs and Coordinator of Advising for Mathematics in 1989 and served in that capacity until 1999. He made an important contribution to communications between faculty and students by starting the Undergraduate Math Newsletter which has been published twice each year since 1995. The newsletter includes information on courses, professors and students and, of course, challenging mathematical problems.
Since 1969 the mathematics department had only one undergraduate degree, with an option in applied mathematics. Ramsay took the lead in getting a separate Bachelor of Science Degree Program in Applied Mathematics; this was authorized in 1995. Another important contribution Ramsay made was to publicize the opportunities for mathematics majors in Actuary Science. He developed new courses that would allow students an entry in this field and has made progress toward the development of an Advanced Undergraduate Program in Actuarial Science.
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| Ramsay with a picture autographed by Holtz (Reprinted with permission of the News and Observer, Raleigh, NC) |
Ramsay got his "fifteen minutes of fame" in 1975 in a confrontation with Lou Holtz, the football coach. Ramsay was jogging on the track while Holtz was holding a football practice. Holtz wanted to have a "closed practice" to keep anyone from spying on his team. Holtz asked Ramsay to leave, but Ramsay refused saying he didn't think that Holtz had the authority to close the field. Holtz then asked a security guard to ask Ramsay to leave. He refused, was arrested for trespassing and carried downtown in his gym shorts. Lou Holtz was quoted as saying he thought Ramsay was a football spy. The story hit the wire services and it was picked up and went all over the country. The charges against Ramsay were ultimately dropped. Some years later, when Ramsay was about to take a sabbatical at Stanford, a few friends gave a party for him. One of his friends wrote to Holtz, then coaching at Arkansas, and asked for an autographed photo, Ramsay says "Holtz must have thought I was leaving State for good because he wrote on the photo "If I knew you were leaving, I'd have stayed".
Ramsay has been married four times. He was married to Una Kay Hilton (3.5 years), Peggy Ann Bradshaw (9.5 years), Dana May Latch, a professor in the mathematics department (3.5 years), and currently married to Anne Carter Sprinkle, Jr. (15 years as of December 2002 and still counting). He has one stepdaughter, Darell Troxel (nee Latch).
--N. J. Rose (January, 2003)