Mathematics Department from 1932 to 1957
The Fisher Years
When Professor Yates retired as head of the mathematics department in 1932, Hilbert A. Fisher took over as acting head. John Harrelson became head in 1933 but, after serving for just one year, was selected to be the chief administrator of the College. Fisher was appointed Head of the mathematics department in 1934 and served until 1957.
Hilbert A. Fisher was born on Jan. 14, 1892, in Salisbury, North Carolina. He graduated from Mount Pleasant Collegiate Institute (junior college) in June, 1911, and entered the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He made his letter in athletics for four years, and for three years he was the leading batter on the baseball team. Prof. Fisher graduated from the Naval Academy in June, 1915. During World War I he was in transport service and made 10 round trips to Europe convoying troops. He served on the dreadnought (a battleship armed with six or more guns having calibers of 12 inches or more) U. S. S. New Hampshire for two years and was Executive Engineering Officer for one year. In 1919 Prof. Fisher graduated from the U. S. Submarine School and for the next year was assigned to sea duty on a submarine. He resigned from the navy in 1920 and came to State College as an instructor in the Department of Mathematics. In 1921 Prof. Fisher accepted an offer to be co-principal of the Mount Amoena Seminary at Mount Pleasant; he returned to State College in 1924. In 1927 Fisher received a Master of Science in Physics from State College. He received an honorary doctorate from Lenoir-Rhyne College. He is the author of textbooks in solid geometry and algebra. (Adapted from Alumni News, February, 1940, Fisher folder, UA # 9.3, NC State Archives)
Hilbert A. Fisher
John William Harrelson was born in Cleveland County, North Carolina, the son of a tenant farmer. He entered NC A & M (NC State) in 1905 and graduated with a bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering. He was president of the senior class, president of the Mechanical Society, captain of the student military unit, business manager of the Agromeck, and valedictorian of the class of 1909. After graduation he stayed on at the College as an instructor in the Mathematics Department. By 1921 he had become a full professor. He was granted a leave of absence in 1929 to be Director of the State Department of Conservation and returned to North Carolina State in 1933 as Head of the Mathematics Department. After one year as Head he was selected to be Dean of Administration of the College (title changed to Chancellor in 1945). He took a leave of absence to serve as a Colonel in WWI. Harrelson, known as "Colonel" by students and faculty, became college archivist when he retired in 1953. He left a $100,000 donation to NC State for art purchases and a lecture series. Harrelson Hall is named in his honor.
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| Frank Graham | John Harrelson | |
| President of the Consolidated University | Dean of Administration | |
| [Photos from NC State Archives, UA # 23.5] | ||
By 1931 there were three major public institutions of higher learning in North Carolina: the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, the North Carolina College for Women in Greensboro and the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Engineering in Raleigh. To effect greater efficiency and to avoid duplication of programs, the State Legislature voted to consolidate these three institutions under one central administration. The college in Raleigh was given the long and awkward name: North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering of the University of North Carolina. The trustees of the consolidated university recommended that the School of Business and Science at State be phased out. Both State and Chapel Hill had engineering programs and the issue of where the engineering instruction was to be centered was left to President Graham, the first president of the consolidated system. Graham was a UNC graduate and the NC State supporters feared that Graham would favor UNC in his decision. However in 1936, President Graham made the crucial decision to close the engineering program at Chapel Hill and consolidate all engineering instruction at State. This decision was an enormous boost to NC State and its engineering school. The Mathematics Department also benefited greatly from this decision for it meant an increased demand for mathematics courses. The price paid for getting exclusive control of engineering was the prohibition of granting degrees in the humanities and sciences, including mathematics. This ban on a degree in mathematics was not lifted until 1956.
According to Hubert Park, who became one of the department's prominent professors, Fisher had a vision for State College. He anticipated that the Engineering School at State would grow in size, quality and prestige and wanted the mathematics department to participate in this growth. He decided it was time to upgrade the faculty in the department. In 1934 Fisher hired the first two Ph.D.'s in the department: J. G. Estes (MIT) and J. M. Clarkson (Cornell). Hubert Park, who received his Ph.D. from UNC in 1939, also joined the faculty that year. In 1935 three additional Ph.D.'s were appointed: J. W. Cell (Illinois), J. Levine (Princeton), and R. C. Bullock (Chicago). In addition L. S. Winton and H. Nahikian joined the department; they received their doctorates in 1939, Winton from Duke and Nahikian from UNC. In addition C. Mumford who joined the department in 1928 received his doctorate from Duke in 1941. Estes died in an airplane accident in 1935 but the rest of these men were the core of the Mathematics Department for several decades.
Fisher was very diplomatic, and he knew how to get things done. He was a close friend of Harrelson, the Dean of Administration, and had cordial relations with other members of the administration of the College. He used these friendships to good advantage in getting the approval to hire Ph.D.'s in the department. According to Hubert Park, some members of the engineering department thought that it was foolish to hire Ph.D.'s to teach engineers. However, most eventually came to the conclusion that it was not only good for the mathematics department but also for the engineering school.J. G. Estes had a Ph.D. in Aeronautical Engineering and was also a pilot. One spring day in 1935 Hubert Park and his wife Mary Alice were watching Estes fly at the old Raleigh airport near Garner. Estes asked Hubert if he wanted to fly with him. Before Hubert could say anything, Mary Alice replied, "No, he doesn't." Hubert and his wife left the airport and returned home. Shortly thereafter they received a call from the airport informing them that Estes had died in a crash. Ever since, Hubert had the good sense to listen to the good sense of his wife.
John Clarkson published a series of papers in Algebraic Geometry. In 1952, he was chairman of the committee for the first meeting of a national mathematics organization on the State campus. Clarkson was a Fulbright Lecturer in Turkey in 1958-59.
Roberts Bullock was active in rocket research during and after World War II and produced ten technical reports in this area. He contributed greatly to the graduate program in its early days. He supervised 21 Masters students, most with thesis. Bullock was also a excellent and popular instructor; he received an Outstanding Teacher award in 1965. When he retired Bullock set up two scholarships in honor of his wife, Pauline, and his daughter Rebecca who predeceased him. They are given to outstanding mathematics majors who have also demonstrated an ability in the use of the English language.
John Cell was head of the department from 1957 until 1967. Cell established a Ph.D. program in mathematics and guided the department during its transition from a strictly teaching department to a teaching and research department. He supervised two large sponsored research projects, one in rocket science, the other in fracture mechanics. He published several books and many papers and had two Ph.D. students. Cell received an Outstanding Teacher Award in 1967. After his death in 1967, the Cell family, and others, established the J. W. Cell Scholarships which are awarded to outstanding junior or senior mathematics majors. (See also 1957-1967)
Jack Levine was the first in the department to do significant research in mathematics, and he was one of the most prolific. Throughout his career he published well over 100 papers in Tensor Analysis, Mathematical Physics and Cryptography. He produced a dozen Ph.D. students. Levine received an Outstanding Teacher Award in 1969. In 1982 Levine established an annual award to the student who had the best performance on the nationwide Putnam Examination. The award was originally known as the " Jack Levine Award" . However, in 1983, the family and friends of Professor Charles Anderson contributed to the fund and its name was changed to the " Levine-Anderson Award."
Carey Mumford supervised undergraduate courses for the department from 1957 to 1960. He was Assistant Dean for the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences from 1960 to 1966 and served for ten years as the chairman of both the University Scheduling Committee and the Traffic Committee. Mumford retired in 1968. The Mumford Scholarship was established in 1970 by the Mumford family and others. It is awarded to an outstanding mathematics student in the sophomore, junior or senior year.
Howard Nahikian was the first Graduate Administrator in the department, serving from 1957 to 1973. He was Assistant Department Head from 1973 until he reitred in 1977. During this same period he was editor of the Harrelson News. Nahikian wrote two undergraduate textbooks and developed an undergraduate course using modern mathematics in biology. He and Park developed a popular graduate course in Matrices and Linear Transformations using the classic treatise of Gantmacher.
Hubert Park served as Assistant Department Head from 1962 to 1972 and Associate Department Head from 1973 to 1978; after John Cell's death in 1967 Park served as Acting Department Head for one year. He received Outstanding Teacher Awards in 1965 and 1968, the Alumni Distinguished Professor Award in 1975 and the Wautauga Medal in 1986. The Mary Alice and Hubert V. Park Scholarships were established in 1977 by Hubert Park and his wife Mary Alice. These awards are made to rising juniors or seniors in mathematics who have demonstrated high academic ability. (See also "1967-1977.html")
Lowell (Bob) Winton served the department in many capacities from 1935 until his retirement in 1976. Although he didn't have a special title he served as what is now called the Director of Undergraduate Studies. He acted as chief advisor for math majors and coordinator of curricular matters for undergraduates. He was recognized in 1971 by his former students as being in the top five percent of the faculty " who contributed most to my education at NCSU." To all who knew him, Dr. Winton was a gentleman and a scholar. In 1987 Winton and his wife Cornelia set up the Winton Graduate Scholarship to aid doctorate students.
The following excerpt from the 1936-37 annual report by Fisher to Dean Riddick shows that research was starting to play a role in the department.
" ... there is a weekly seminar conducted for discussing the work in the major field of research of the leader, who is scheduled for a series of six successive lectures. To date, the fields discussed have been Tensor Analysis, Projective Differential Geometry, Cremona Plane Transformations, and Functions of a Complex Variable."In 1936 an undergraduate course in Mathematics of Finance was introduced. It has remained a popular course over the years. The course became identified with C. F. Lewis who taught it from about 1950 to 1992. Marilyn McCollum took over and has guided the course since then. Three new courses for advanced undergraduates were added in 1936: Series, Approximate Methods and Advanced Analytic Geometry.
[College of Engineering, Annual Reports, Dept of Mathematics,UA # 105.2.29, NC State Archives.]
In 1947, after several years effort, the degree of Master of Engineering Mathematics was approved. It is interesting that the graduate degree program was started before the undergraduate degree program. The prerequisite undergraduate courses for entrance into the Masters program in Engineering Mathematics were Drawing, Mechanics, Fluid Mechanics, Strength of materials, Physics and Differential Equations. This essentially ruled out anyone who did not have an undergraduate degree in engineering. The required courses for the degree were Theory of Equations, Advanced Calculus for Engineers, Series for Engineers, Vector Analysis, Ordinary and Partial Differential equations, Complex Variables and Operational Mathematics. Seven additional courses were required with at least five being chosen in one or two fields of engineering. According to the 1947 catalog:
"The curriculum is designed for several purposes---to remedy an alarming deficiency in trained teachers in Engineering Mathematics, to provide supplementary courses of a distinguished quality for other engineering curricula, to foster mutual scholarly attainments with members of other departments, and to provide men for industry with the necessary training to apply mathematics to engineering problems"During World War II there was a drop of enrollment from 2426 in the fall of 1942 to a low of 822 in the fall of 1944. By 1946 the number had jumped to 4902 mainly because of the G.I. bill which gave generous education benefits to returning veterans. During the war, Fisher was named Armed Services Coordinator for the war programs at State College. Although the regular student enrollment decreased, there were special programs for the military to aid in the war effort. Six members of the department taught in the Pre-Radar program and five members were transferred to part-time teaching in Electrical Engineering, Mechanics and Physics. John Cell was on leave for a year doing research on artillery rockets at the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Jack Levine worked as a civilian in the Signal Intelligence Service at the beginning of the war but then joined the Army doing the exact same job, for less pay. The Army awarded Levine the Legion of Merit for his work.
The department had long wanted an undergraduate degree program in mathematics. This had been prohibited by President Graham when NC State received the engineering school. However, in 1956, NC State finally obtained permission to offer a Bachelors degree in Engineering Mathematics. This was certainly a natural name for the program since the Mathematics Department was then in the School of Engineering. Moreover, any attempt to call the program " Mathematics" was objected to by the University at Chapel Hill, who didn't want a program that would compete with their own program in mathematics. Students in this program typically took seven semester courses in mathematics beyond calculus, two semesters of statistics, all of the usual engineering science courses, one year of French or German, and the required courses in humanities. Most of the students were planning for graduate study in preparation for teaching or for work as mathematicians in industry. The freshman class in the fall of 1956 contained five men listed as majors in the Engineering Mathematics Program. In the spring of 1957 the first two undergraduates received the degree of " Bachelor of Engineering Mathematics."
As mentioned above, Fisher brought in a group of Ph.D. faculty in the 1930's; he also hired the following:
Charles N. Anderson came to NC State in 1953. He obtained both an undergraduate and a masters degrees from State. His teaching effectiveness was recognized in 1970 by a letter from Provost Kelly who congratulated him for being in the top 25% of the faculty as rated by the students. He was also very active as a student advisor and served on many departmental committees and the Faculty Senate. Anderson was the Scheduling Officer of the department from 1973 until his retirement in 1983. After his death in 1984, the family, friends of colleagues of Anderson increased the funding for the "Jack Levine Award." This award is given to the student with the best performance in the Putnam competition. Later, the name of this award was changed to the " Levine-Anderson Award."Dorothy Brant obtained her Bachelors and Masters Degrees from the University of Wisconsin. She joined the department in 1956. Her main interest was teaching mathematics to liberal arts students. Brant retired in 1975.
Henry C. Cooke earned his Bachelors and Masters degrees at NC State and joined the faculty in 1949. Cooke was an enthusiastic instructor during his 30 year teaching career and won an Outstanding Teacher Award in 1973 and was also recognized by the alumni as a person who contributed most to their education. He was one of the first to teach courses on Educational Television. Cooke also served on the Faculty Senate and was the first chairman of the Faculty Assembly of the UNC system. He retired in 1979.
Ruth B. Honeycutt received a BA from Wellsley College in 1932 and a MA from Duke University in 1934. She joined the department in 1946. Honeycutt helped develop the courses taken by liberal arts students. She was a dedicated teacher until her retirement in 1975.
Charles F. Lewis obtained his bachelor's degree from Middle Tennessee State University in 1932. He taught at various secondary schools before coming to State in 1946. In 1969 his former students ranked him in the top five percent of the faculty as an instructor ``who contributed most to my education at NCSU.'' Lewis took over the undergraduate Financial Mathematics course and developed it into a popular course for non-math majors. He retired in 1975 but continued to teach part-time for another 16 years--the last 9 years without compensation. When Lewis retired he endowed a scholarship to be given to an outstanding student who is pursuing a double major in Mathematics and Mathematics Education.
Paul E. Lewis got his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois before joining the mathematics department in 1947. In 1955 he left State to work in industry. He returned to the department in 1965 as Professor of Mathematics and Director of the Computer Center. n 1967 Computer Science became a separate department and Lewis became Head of the new department.
Charles H. Little graduated from from Davidson College in 1933 and obtained a M.S. from UNC in 1936. He came to State in 1946 after serving in the Navy in WWII. Little was a popular and dedicated teacher until his retirement in 1979. He was recognized by vote of the Alumni as one who contributed most to their education at State. He served in the Naval Reserve for 30 years, reaching the rank of Captain.
Armstrong Maltbie was educated at the University of Vermont and spent five years teaching High School Mathematics before coming to NC State in 1946. Except for the period 1951-1956, when he was head of the Math Department at Broughton High School in Raleigh, Maltbie remained at State until his retirement in 1979. Maltbie received Outstanding Teaching Awards in 1967 and 1970. He served as supervisor of the teaching assistants for over twenty-two years. When he retired Professor and Mrs. Maltbie established the " Armstrong Maltbie Awards" to be given to graduate Teaching Assistants who have excelled in teaching.
Arnold R. Nolstad came to State in 1946 and received a Ed.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1948. Nolstad, together with Cooke and Petrea, pioneered in teaching courses on TV. The course in History of Mathematics was taught by Nolstad for many years. He retired in 1974.
Carlotta P. Patton obtained her undergraduate degree at the College of Charleston in 1928. She taught at State from 1943 to 1945 and rejoined the department in 1956. Patton was the one who suggested that the department put out an annual newsletter. The Harrelson News was published annually from 1972 until 1986 and then again in 2000. She retired in 1973.
Howard A. Petrea joined the faculty in 1946 and obtained an M.S. in 1951 from UNC. Petrea was one of the most demanding, yet popular, undergraduate instructors. He taught large lecture sections in calculus and differential equations for over thirty years and probably reached more students than any other mathematics instructor. Petrea received Outstanding Teacher Awards in 1966, 1971 and again in 1983. He was also awarded an Alumni Distinguished Professorship in 1976. E. E. Burniston, head of the department for many years, noted that whenever he ran across graduates of NC State in his travels, they would almost always inquire about two people---Professor Park and Professor Petrea. Upon his retirement in 1995, Petrea's friends, family and colleagues set up the Howard A. Petrea Scholarship that is awarded to an outstanding senior in mathematics.
Jason L. Sox obtained his B.S and Masters Degrees from State. He was an instructor at Elon before joining the faculty at State in 1956. He finished his Ph.D under Harrington in 1969 on "complete orthogonal sequences" and wrote several papers in this area. Sox was listed in the top 25% of the faculty in student polls for five consecutive years, 1966-1970. He retired in 1986.
Herbert E. Speece came to NC State as an instructor in the Mathematics Department in 1947. He was the first Ph.D. graduate of Jack Levine in 1956; however, the degree was from UNC Chapel Hill, since State did not yet have a Ph.D. program. He obtained a joint appointment with the School of Education in 1949 and administered the mathematics and science teaching programs. He became the first head of the Mathematics and Science Education Department and held that position until he retired in 1980. Speece retained his joint appointment in the Mathematics Department and was the main reason for the close working relations between the Mathematics and the Mathematics and Science Education Departments.
Charles F. Strobel got a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1941 and came to NC State the same year. At the time he was one of only a handful of Ph.D.'s in the department and was deeply involved in the Masters degree program. Strobel died in 1956, one day before his 45th birthday.
George C. Watson received an M.A. from the University of Virginia in 1934 and joined the Mathematics Department in 1945. He served as Scheduling Officer for the department until he retired in 1973. Watson was a Civil War buff and published several papers on Slavery in the Old South.
During the Fisher years, 1932-1957, the department changed considerably. The course offerings increased from 10 to 39, and the number of faculty rose from 9 to 31. The number of Ph.D.'s on the faculty jumped from 0 to 11. Degree programs in engineering mathematics were started at both the Masters and Bachelors level. During this time research started to become recognized as an important part of the work of a faculty member. There were two sponsored research programs started after World War II---one on Combinatorics supervised by Jack Levine, and one on Rocket Science directed by John Cell. The university enrollment rose from 1633 in 1932 to 5766 in 1957, although, as mentioned above, there was some shrinkage during World War II.
In 1956, the last year of the Fisher administration, the faculty consisted of:
Full Professors: H. A. Fisher (Head), R. C. Bullock, J. W. Cell, J. M. Clarkson,
Jack Levine, C. G. Mumford, H. M. Nahikian, H. V. Park, H. Page Williams, L. S. Winton.
Associate Professors:
P. E. Lewis, C. F. Strobel, G. C. Watson.
Assistant Professors: E. J. Canady, H. C. Cooke,
Anna Mae Harris, C. F. Lewis, D. M. Peterson, V. R. Brantley, C. H. Little, A. Maltbie, A. R. Nolstad,
H. A. Petrea.
Instructors: H. E. Speece, Ruth B. Honeycutt, C. N. Anderson,
G. C. Caldwell, Martha J. Garren, A. R. Marshall, Carlotta P. Patton, W. C. Turner, D. P. Wylie.
The faculty included four women. Of the 23 professorial faculty, 11 held the Ph.D. Degree.