Another announcement turned up in my email the other day, this one for next week’s Bochner lecture, named for the first holder of the Edgar Odell Lovett Chair in Mathematics, Salomon Bochner: Bochner has always seemed a heroic figure to me, a genuinely admirable man. When he arrived at Rice in 1968 he was already 70 years old, retired after a brilliant career at Princeton, and rather than resting on his laurels he created a lasting legacy here as well. I hardly know how to begin describing Bochner’s contributions to the intellectual life of the campus, which included prominently the founding of Scientia, so I will offer this piece from an issue of The Flyleaf that was dedicated to Bochner, written by Al Van Helden of the History Department (Click on it a couple of times to enlarge.) As the article mentions, Professor Bochner’s papers are housed in the Woodson. The catalogue includes a brief biography. (Another, longer piece about him is here.) You really should take a look at it. He was a remarkable man, a great mathematician who led a truly rich life dedicated to his family and to learning. He would have enjoyed this year’s talk. Bonus: It finally stopped raining. Now, this.
