Department of Mathematics and Statistics Newsletter 2015 Newsletter | Page 10

Our “retired” faculty • Jo Heath published her second novel under her pen name “Jo Wharton Heath,” titled, 1 + 1 = Murder. The book is a mystery set in Auburn, and much of the action takes place in Parker Hall. Readers who are current or former denizens of Parker Hall will feel right at home, except for the bit about whiteboards versus blackboards. Heath’s editor insisted that no one would believe Parker Hall still used blackboards! • In recent years, Peg Daniels has become a writer. Her short stories have been published in The Dos Passos Review, Kaleidoscope, Little (Flash) Fiction, moonShine Review, Southern Women’s Review, and other literary magazines. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Kaleidoscope and the national magazine New Mobility. A couple of stories won awards in writing contests, and one story has been anthologized in Chinaberries and Crows, a collection of stories and poems with a Southern theme. Daniels has been invited to give readings at the last four Auburn Writers Conferences. She is on her omegath revision of a mystery novel and hopes to complete it very, very soon. Her author website, containing links to her published pieces, is prgdaniels.com. • Jack Brown attended the 39th annual Summer Symposium in Real Analysis in June 2015 at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. The symposia are considered to be the premier conferences of their type by members of the real analysis community and traditionally draw participants from North America, Central, Eastern, and Western Europe, and countries of the former Soviet Union. The conference had 94 participants. • Gary Gruenhage, A. J. Meir, and Steve Stuckwisch received Professor Emeritus status. *Gary Gruenhage is the Retired Faculty Liaison. Please send your news to him at [email protected] so that we can include you in our newsletter. 10 Faculty professorships inspire, promote faculty development Tin-Yau Tam is chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics and in 2012 was named the Lloyd and Sandra Nix Endowed Professor. He joined the Auburn University faculty in 1988 and since that time, has accumulated numerous honors and awards including being named SEC Academic Leadership Development Program Fellow and Outstanding Graduate Mentor. Tam teaches graduate and undergraduate courses where his research interests are in algebraic structures and classification, problem solving involving analytical and algebraic techniques, and representation theory and their applications. “The Lloyd and Sandra Nix Endowed Professorship is a great honor to me and I am humbled to have received it. It meant even more when I got to know Sandy and Lloyd. My wife Kitty and I had dinner with them on several occasions, during which I learned that Lloyd Nix was the quarterback of Auburn’s 1957 National Championship football team. We talked about many different things, but it is interesting that we did not talk about football! Sandy and Lloyd are wonderful people, and great Auburn supporters. The financial support that I receive helps propel my research. In the past three years, I was able to use the funds to suppo