Koh - Ramsay Retirement Luncheon at Brothers
On Monday, May 4, 2004, a group about 40 faculty and staff gathered at Brothers to honor Kwangil Koh and Bob Ramsay. on their retirement. Probably neither will fully retire; it is likely that they will continue to teach part-time.
After a very nice buffet lunch, John Franke gave a short resume of each man's career followed by comments by Stitzinger and Cohen for Koh and Lada and Page and R. Martin for Ramsay. Both men were presented with gifts. The affair was topped off with a delcious cake (see picture below).
Kwangil Koh was awarded a Ph.D. from UNC at Chapel Hill in 1964. started at State in 1964. His research is in ring theory, number theory, group theory and topological algebra. During his career Koh wrote one book, more than 70 research papers and supervised 11 Ph.D. theses. He was one of the coaches for the Putnam Examination for many years. In November 2002 a Mid-Atlantic Algebra Conference was held in honor of the retirement of Kwangil Koh and Jiang Luh. Koh went on phased retirement in 2001
Koh was the first algebraist to be hired by the department and over the years has been a big factor in bringing many other alebraists to the department. Below is a rare picture of Koh at an algebra conference at the University of Arkansas while he was still a graduate student. Note that one of the mathematicians in the picture is James Scroggs, the father of our own Jeff Scroggs.
1962–University of Oklahoma, Research Particpation Group
Left to Right: Row One: Kwangil Koh, Edgar Karet, Helen Sullivan, Miriam Ater, Shankar Dwivid, Peter Mercer, Marion Beiter. Row Two: John McNamee, James Scroggs, Raymond Roth, Richard Andree, Lester Laird, John Long, William Frawley, Lowry McKee.
Robert Ramsay got his Ph.D. from the University of Miami in 1967 and joined the department the same year. He helped to coach students for the Putnam Competition since the early 1980's. Ramsay served as Director of Undergraduate Programs and Coordinator of Advising for Mathematics from 1989 until 1999. He started the Undergraduate Math Newsletter which has been published twice each year since 1995. The same year Ramsay took the lead in getting a separate Bachelor of Science Degree Program in Applied Mathematics. He promoted the opportunities for mathematics majors in Actuary Science and developed new courses that would facilitate entry to this field. Ramsay went on phased retirement in 2001.
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".
| Gil Koh | Anne and Bob Ramsay | |
| Carolyn Gunter, Lavon Page, Di Buckner | Tom Lada, Anne and Bob Ramsay | |
| X. Linn, H. Tran, John Franke | Bob White, ?, Bob Martin | |
| Campbell, Charlton, Norris | Di Buckland, Denise Seabrook | |
| Charlene Wallace, Bisa Beeks | GIl Koh | |
| Gil Koh | Richard Chandler | |
| The Cake | Bisa Beeks, Charlene Wallace | |
| Jesus Rodriguez, Sharon Lubkin, Sandy Paur | Bob Ramsay | |