Author Archives: Melissa Kean

It’s a rainy day today, which reminded me of this charming image: But what do these people have in common, besides a shared conviction that they won’t melt in the rain and the fact that they’re all really nice? It … Continue reading →

One of the contrasts that never fails to entertain is the one between undergraduate hijinks and the serious discussion thereof by senior administrators. This one is a classic, with the Committee on Outdoor Sports handing down their verdict on Sammy … Continue reading →

Update: The first time I got interested in the 1926 Math Department photo (five years ago!) I found myself perplexed about the location of the group and had to go out to look for it. It was changed from the … Continue reading →

It was this post, about Hubert Bray ’18, the first man to get a doctorate at Rice. This mistake led me down quite an interesting path. Even as I wrote it I was bothered in the back of my mind … Continue reading →

I’m stepping away from the Math Department for a moment (but only for a moment–I’ll be back there next week) because I came across something unusual in the Business Manager’s Papers, not typically the most entertaining collection. You just generally … Continue reading →

This is the kind of thing that happens when you spend thirty years in the same archive. One day last week I was rummaging around in a box of images used by the Rice News back in 1999. I smiled … Continue reading →

It  might seem improbable but the first man to receive a Rice doctorate appears in the very same 1926 photograph as the first woman to earn one. Hubert Bray ’18 is right over Miss Hickey’s shoulder towards our left: It’s … Continue reading →

Update: I got several emails and comments about yesterday’s post about Shmuel Agmon, specifically about the presence of two women in the department in 1926. This is a post from several years ago about the younger of the two, May … Continue reading →

I got an email yesterday afternoon from Rice Computer Science professor Moshe Vardi letting me know that his Great Grand Advisor Shmuel Agmon was celebrating his hundredth birthday. (Mathematicians carefully trace their academic genealogies. Here’s Agmon’s.) Agmon was hired by … Continue reading →

This is almost the definition of an unexpected find–a petition signed by the better part of the female students, asking simply that they be allowed to play tennis on the campus women’s courts with friends who weren’t enrolled at the … Continue reading →