Below is a transcript of our conversation with CMU Emeritus Mathematics Professor Rich Fleming:
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. When Dr. Rich Fleming retired from CMU in 2007, he endowed a lecture series that each year welcomes, as a guest to campus, someone making contributions to the field of math research. I sat down with Dr. Fleming to talk STEM in K12 education, trends in math research, and concerns over potential reductions in funding for that research.
Has the attention to it sped up the process of the change that we see within the field of mathematics?
Rich Fleming:
Well, I think the, you know, the change in K through 12 has come through the mathematics education people. Mathematical research that's done would be very hard for anybody to understand who hasn’t had years of study. So, it's hard for (for) me to explain. Now that, of course, the people at the top doing the greatest work that they've made. Yes, there have been. There have been things that have been done. Often times, mathematical research is something that shows up, maybe years after it was done, because mathematicians doing research are not saying oh, I want to do this in order to accomplish some great goal, they're doing research 'cause they're interested in it, and it's pure. The more then of course there is the applied side of things. The applied mathematicians, which have done great things, but (but) for someone like me, I was what you would call a pure mathematician.
DN:
Are those things then, that that tend to be out in that theoretical or applied version that (that) don't necessarily find their ways down to the basics and the core of what K12 students as (as) each generation comes along, what those students will be learning?
RF:
They would tend not to come down there too much. The new math sort of brought some of the kinds of thinking that research mathematicians do. I think that came into it a little bit. The research being done now and published. I mean, I could. I can't read most of it.
DN:
Federal funding research dollars in many different areas and all of the upheaval as to whether or not dollars will be frozen, whether programs that have funded research in the past will be continued, and (and) all of the different things without getting into those specifics, it's obviously had quite an impact and quite a reaction from a lot of folks. What do you hear in in talking with colleagues as to what they anticipate as to how secure the research and the funding for doing that is going to be moving forward?
RF:
I'm a little worried about what they're talking about. Certainly, you can look into the name of an art, something that someone studying and say whether what's good is that what good is that? Certainly, you can say that in mathematics, and probably in most every other field. My feeling has always been you get a lot of people doing a lot of. Nobody knows which of those things are really going to be important, but I will point out (out) that during World War 2, when they were putting together the group to develop the atomic bomb that were several powerful mathematicians involved in that and who (who) knew some physics. You had to know some physics, but they were powerful mathematicians and they were used. So, it's hard to explain that in a few of talked about what they've been doing ahead of time. The average person would have said what so? That's how I think about it. I think it's important to have a lot of research going on. Universities have supported that themselves by reduced teaching loads and trying to help people in that way, but an awful lot has been done recently through research grants, and I'm afraid that's going to go down, it looks like. So that's what I'm worried about.
DN:
Certainly, you're to be commended for making a contribution to that, to share information, to expose that to the generations that are coming up with this lecture series that bears your name through CMU’s math department. Dr. Rich Fleming, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us.
RF:
Well, thank you. Thank you for the invitation.
DN:
This year's guest for the Fleming Lecture Series is Dr. Stephen Bell from Purdue University. His presentation will focus on the historical use of complex numbers and calculus to better understand nature. Dr. Bell's lecture is Friday, April 18th at 4:00 PM in French auditorium in CMU’s Education and Human Services Building.
