Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics
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The Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics (HCSSiM) is a residential program for mathematically talented high school students. The program has been conducted each summer since 1971, with the exceptions of 1981 and 1996, and has more than 1500 alumni.[1][2]
The program was created and is still headed by Professor David C. Kelly. For a period Professor Don Goldberg was co-director of the program, and at a later period Sarah-Marie Belcastro was co-director.
The program is housed at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and generally runs for six weeks from early July until mid-August. The program itself consists of lectures, study sessions, math workshops (general-knowledge classes), maxi-courses (three-week classes run by the senior staff members), and mini-courses (specialized shorter classes).
On a typical day, students spend the morning in class, have lunch together with the faculty, and then have several hours to use at their leisure. They return for the "Prime Time Theorem" (an hour-long talk on an interesting piece of mathematics given by a faculty member or a visitor), have dinner, and then spend a few hours solving problems.
Although the entire student body changes every year, HCSSiM has a number of well-established traditions. Some of the oldest of these traditions deal with the repeated use, in mathematical problems, jokes, and lectures, of the number 17 (and its multiples) and the Yellow Pig. These two traditions were started by Professor Kelly, who collects objects with yellow pigs on them and examples of the number 17 in print.
Many students go on to professional careers in mathematics. An occasional publication[3] has resulted from work done at the program. Well-known alumni of the program include two MacArthur Fellows, Eric Lander and Erik Winfree, as well as Lisa Randall, Dana Randall, and Eugene Volokh.[citation needed] Many alumni return to the campus for a few days around Yellow Pig's Day (July 17) of each year. This observance was formalized for 2006 in "Yellow Pig Math Days," which was conducted in observance of 2006 being the 34th offering of the HCSSiM Program (34 being a multiple of 17).
The Summer Studies has been funded in the past by the American Mathematical Society[4] and the U.S. National Science Foundation.[5]
Other math programs have been organized loosely based on the Hampshire Program, including "The Université Mathématique d'Eté" by Daniel Elliott Loeb at SUPAERO 1991 and ENSAM 1992.
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[edit] Yellow Pigs Day
Yellow Pigs Day, held annually on July 17, is a humorous celebration created and observed by mathematicians at Hampshire College and HCSSiM. The day is marked by exchanging gifts relating to yellow pigs or mathematics, singing yellow pig songs, and playing Ultimate.
Yellow Pigs Day was started by Michael Spivak and David C. Kelly. Spivak's published books include easter egg references to yellow pigs, and Kelly maintains an extensive collection of yellow pigs. In 2006, Hampshire College held a Yellow Pig Math Days conference, as part of the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics program.
[edit] Other alumni
- Toby Ayer, Rhodes scholar and lecturer at MIT
- Bram Cohen, developer of BitTorrent
- Lenore Cowen, professor of computer science at Tufts University
- Marie desJardins, professor of computer science at UMBC
- Alan Edelman, professor of mathematics at MIT
- Paul Edelman, professor of mathematics and professor of law at Vanderbilt University
- Josh Greene, winner of the Morgan Prize
- Paul Feit, professor of mathematics at University of Texas of the Permian Basin
- Glenn Ellison, professor of economics at MIT
- Daniel Elliott Loeb, financier at Susquehanna International Group
- Neil Immerman, professor of computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Susan Landau, engineer at Sun Microsystems
- Eric Lander, Science advisor to President Obama
- Robert Lipshutz, vice president of Affymetrix
- Jim Propp, professor of mathematics at University of Massachusetts Lowell
- JP Massar, MIT Blackjack Team founder
- Lisa Randall, professor of physics at Harvard University
- Barry Nalebuff, professor at Yale University School of Management
- Larry Riddle, professor of mathematics at Agnes Scott College
- Jessica Riskin, professor of history at Stanford University
- John Rothchild, professor of law and associate dean at Wayne State University Law School
- Seth Schoen, technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Loren Shure, technologist at the MathWorks
- Greg Sorkin, research staff member in the mathematical sciences at IBM.
- Ann Trenk, professor of mathematics at Wellesley College
- Jade Vinson, winner of the Morgan Prize
- Eugene Volokh,[6] professor of law at UCLA
- Edward Scheinerman, professor of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University
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This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
[edit] References
- ^ "HCSSiM home page, Frequently and Less Frequently Asked Questions with Frequent Answers". http://www.hcssim.org/faq.html. Retrieved 2008-04-14.
- ^ Laura A. Haight (1982-02-05). "Hamming It Up At Hampshire: Mathematics Gone Hogwild". Harvard Crimson. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=186796. Retrieved 2007-03-04.
- ^ For instance, Joel Auslander; Arthur T. Benjamin and Daniel Shawcross Wilkerson (1993). "Optimal leapfrogging". Mathematics Magazine 66 (1): pp. 14–19. doi:10.2307/2690465. JSTOR 2690465. http://www.math.hmc.edu/~benjamin/papers/leapfrogging.pdf.
- ^ Jackson, Allyn (November 2003). "Supporting a National Treasure". Notices of the American Mathematical Society 50 (10): 1221. http://www.ams.org/notices/200310/commentary.pdf. Retrieved 2007-03-04.
- ^ HCSSiM received funding under the Young Scholars Program (YSP) of the Division of Research on Learning (DRL) of the NSF. The grant award numbers were 8855094, 9055090, 9256071, and 9452685.
- ^ "HCSSiM About our alumni". http://www.hcssim.org/about-our-alumni.html. Retrieved 2008-05-03.
