#math professor

Tom Lehrer, the popular song satirist who lampooned marriage, politics, racism and the Cold War, then largely abandoned his music career to return to teaching math at Harvard and other universities, has died. He was 97.

Longtime friend David Herder said Lehrer died Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He did not specify a cause of death.

[c] math prof: u can do it!

fun animated comic for @/hauke based on a true story

~ ~ ~

Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here we sat with our hands folded on our desks in silence,for the full two hours  

Everything. I gave an exam worth   40 percent of the grade for this term   and assigned some reading due today   on which I’m about to hand out a quiz   worth 50 percent

Nothing. None of the content of this course has value or meaning Take as many days off as you like: any activities we undertake as a class I assure you will not matter either to you or me and are without purpose  

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time   a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel   or other heavenly being appeared   and revealed to us what each woman or man must do  to attain divine wisdom in this life and   the hereafter   This is the last time the class will meet   before we disperse to bring the good news to all people on earth.

Nothing. When you are not present how could something significant occur? 

Everything. Contained in this classroom   is a microcosm of human experience   assembled for you to query and examine and ponder   This is not the only place such an opportunity has been gathered  

but it was one place  

And you weren’t here

Every math professor:

When I was little I had a squished penny from the Indianapolis zoo with a lemur on it that I used as a guitar pick. I lost it years ago but it was always my favorite penny. I don't remember telling my complex analysis professor this but she does. She goes to Disney every single break and she brought me this penny after Thanksgiving break. She didn't even realize I was bringing my guitar back to school after this break to start playing again. I don't even know how to express what a thoughtful gift this was. Some mathematicians, evidently, have social skills.

he says some of the best things, but the best part is his deadpan delivery. i’ll keep adding to this as the semester wears on.

“hippity-hoppity, distributive property”

*sneezes* “that would have killed a lesser man.”

*finishes long integration* *smiles calmly* “Well, that was fun and exciting, wasn’t it?” 

we were working on matrices involving imaginary numbers. he wanted us to simplify it. his wording, “now we have to poke the i’s out.” poke the eyes out, guys.

professor asks how we can find the inverse of a matrix. i know there are two ways, but i can only remember one. me: you could augment the matrix with the identity matrix and row reduce. professor: oh, that’s dirty, [my name] me: *internally screaming*