UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #668
PARTER, SEYMOUR V.

PARTER, Seymour (1927- )
Professor Emeritus, Computer Sciences and Mathematics
At UW: 1963-1996

Interviewed: 2004	
Interviewer: Joyce Coleman
Length: 2 hours, 44 minutes

Study of mathematics; employment at Los Alamos; academic career at MIT, Indiana, Cornell, UW; relationship with Barkley Rosser; history of Math Research Center; impact of student protest movements, Vietnam War, and TAA strike; colleagues and development of the Math, Computer Science, and Numerical Analysis Departments; impact of Sterling Hall Bombing; research interests and articles; involvement in Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

First Interview Session (March 30, 2004): Tapes 1-2

Tape 1/Side 1

00:00:15	Seymour Parter discusses his childhood, family, and early years.  SP discusses undergraduate study and early interest in physics.  He defied counselors' advice to stay away from mathematics.  

00:03:47	SP discusses job market for scientists and mentions that he went to Los Alamos.

00:04:31	SP discusses his decision to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology and how he balanced his studies with working at his family’s restaurant.  

00:08:03	SP mentions his masters' thesis in topology under Karl Menger at IIT.

00:08:33	SP talks about obtaining a position at Los Alamos during the Korean War as a means of avoiding military service.  He relates his responsibilities in developing computing capabilities at Los Alamos, Washington, D.C., and New York University between 1951 and 1957.  He discusses the influence of his Los Alamos connection in gaining friends among NYU faculty and his decision to commence graduate studies.

00:14:20	SP mentions that his dissertation was written in pure mathematics despite his interest in applied and numerical mathematics. 

00:15:37	SP addresses the origins of his career in academia and the ease with which he was hired at MIT to teach and do research.  He assesses the impact of Sputnik on science education and consequently on his hiring at Indiana University to be associate director of the computing center and assistant professor of mathematics (1957-59).  SP traces his career to Cornell, Stanford, and lastly UW.

00:19:57	SP discusses the role of IBM in generating computer science programs at American universities in the late 1950s and the jealousy with which researches guarded their computers, especially for chemistry and quantum chemistry, linguistics, and astronomy.

00:23:27	SP speculates about origins of the UW Numerical Analysis Department and discusses Preston Hammer and R.H. Bing.  

00:26:20	SP talks about his decision to come to UW in 1963 after he had become disaffected with Cornell.  At Cornell, the department chair, Barkley Rosser, had created dissension within the pure mathematics department by proposing an applied math department.  He discusses the origins of the Computer Science Department at UW and its early members.

00:30:32	SP delves further into the person and career of Barkley Rosser and the Math Research Center.

00:31:20	End of side.

Tape 1/Side 2

00:31:23	Seymour Parter continues his description of Barkley Rosser and his role as director of the Math Research Center.  SP discusses the impact of the Vietnam War and the student protest movement on the Math Research Center.  He also describes his professional relationship with Rosser while working at UW.

00:37:16	SP assesses the personal impact of the Vietnam protests on Rosser and his wife.

00:40:00	SP describes the benefits and drawbacks of working in a cutting-edge field such as computer science.  He points specifically to Eldo Koenig's difficulties in keeping up with rapid advances in computer science while at UW.  

00:42:25	SP discusses the department's difficulty in attracting faculty and relates the diverse backgrounds of some of the department's early hires.

00:43:37	SP talks about the shift toward systems analysis and away from numerical analysis in the department.

00:46:00	SP talks about the physical facilities of the department and explains how the department's first computers operated with basic machine language.

00:51:01	SP talks about the relationship between the Numerical Analysis Department and the Numerical Analysis Laboratory.  He relates a story about universities and federal auditors struggling over the proper use of new IBM computers.

00:52:36	SP discusses the numerical analysis curriculum and specifically Numerical Science 132, which he considered to be an “appreciation course.”  He mentions teaching experience during the TAA strike and the scarcity of textbooks for many courses.  SP says enrollment came primarily from computer science students.

00:58:03	SP talks about the department's first PhD, Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, as well as his many graduate students.  SP talks about his numerical science graduate student Pierre Jamet.

01:02:46	End of side.  End of tape.

Tape 2/Side 1

01:02:49	Seymour Parter continues to talk about some of his graduate students and their current careers.

01:06:58	SP recollects student protest movements at UW.  In particular, he criticizes James Rowen for fabricating stories about the Math Research Center for the Capital Times and the Daily Cardinal.  He suggests that all students and most faculty opposed the Vietnam War.  

01:12:35	SP talks about the TAA strike over proposed tuition increase for out-of-state TAs during his tenure as department chair.  SP mentions that Math and Computer Science TAs sympathized with the strike but never circumvented the department's prescribed curriculum.  He talks about how he managed relations within the department during the strike.  

01:20:21	SP relates that he taught during the strike and describes the relatively tranquil relations between faculty and students within the Computer Science Department.  He talks about the TAA's miscalculations in determining which demands would be met.  SP recounts several meetings he had attended with faculty and TAA representatives.  He comments on Chancellor Shain's firmness in dealing with the second TAA strike as compared with the previous chancellor’s dealings.

01:26:07	SP recounts a story to illustrate the unrealistic nature of the TAA's outlook.  He mentions that the strike did not sour long-term student-faculty relations in the Math and Computer Science Departments.

01:27:17	SP recollects the Sterling Hall bombing--although he was in Los Alamos at the time.  He reiterates that the Math Research Center was not doing any classified work, but propaganda at the time misrepresented the MRC's applications of the Monte Carlo method.  SP assesses the impact of the death in the bombing on the campus and the movement.

01:33:19	End of side.  End of tape.
	
Second Interview Session (April 1, 2004)

Tape 3/Side 1

00:00:09	Seymour Parter talks about his teaching career in computer science and mathematics and details the content of some of his courses:  ordinary differential equations, elliptical equations, linear algebra, and sometimes remedial algebra, among other subjects.

00:05:26	SP notes the importance of research for UW faculty, although he says that there has been an increasing emphasis on ability to teach since the 1970s.

00:07:44	He discusses the sources and quantity of funding he has received to conduct research at UW.

00:11:12	SP describes the trajectory of his research interests, from pure mathematics to computing and solving differential equations to elliptic equations.  He notes his interest in matrix theory, graph theory, singular perturbation theory, and iterative methods.  He discusses an important paper of his from 1960 about the use of linear graphs in Gauss elimination.

00:18:07	SP highlights his papers on singular perturbation theory and bifurcation theory as being among his most important contributions to the field.  He returns to a discussion of his article on Gauss elimination in the SIAM Review and his work in estimating Eigen values.

00:22:02	SP describes his service on the Compensation Committee in the early 1980s and its role in winning pay raises for UW faculty.  He also describes his service on the Divisional Sciences Committee and a committee on email and computer privacy.  SP talks about the incident that led to the appointment of this last committee.  He talks about the rules produced by the committee.

00:30:58	End of side.

Tape 3/Side 2

00:31:03	Seymour Parter continues to discuss the rules produced by the committee on email and computer privacy.

00:32:55	SP discusses his membership in the American Mathematical Society and his angry departure from it over involvement in the “Star Wars” issue.  SP expresses his opposition to the Star Wars program but thought that mathematicians should not reject federal funding on account of such opposition.

00:39:02	SP highlights his participation in the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics.  He mentions his editorship of the SIAM Journal of Applied Mathematics, Journal of Numerical Analysis, presidency of SIAM, and various other positions within the Society.  He also notes his service on the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences and Math Education Board.

00:44:01	End of side.  End of tape.

Third Interview Session (April 15, 2004): Tape 4

Tape 4/Side 1

00:00:09	Seymour Parter recounts his honors and awards, including his Fellowship in the American Association for the Advancement of Science and his presidency of SIAM.

00:01:08	SP recollects memories of some of his colleagues, including Creighton Buck, Steve Kleene, and Walter and Mary Ellen Rudin of the Math Department.  He expresses his views on Larry Landweber and Dave DeWitt of the Computer Science Department.

00:06:52	SP talks about his colleague Ben Noble and his impact on the Math Research Center.

00:08:29	SP discusses the transformation of the Math Department since his arrival at UW in the 1960s.  He also describes fellow mathematicians Carl de Boor and Dick Askey.

00:11:13	SP discusses the reasons for his quasi-retirement circa 1996.  SP relates his handling of a case of academic dishonesty that occurred during his final semesters of teaching; he cites intolerance of students’ attitudes as a factor in his retirement. 

00:19:13	SP talks about his travels since retirement to Australia, New Zealand, and Germany, as well as some of the conferences he has attended and lectures he has given.

00:22:46	SP summarizes his experience at UW and emphasizes the merits and demerits of he democratic governance of university departments.  He regrets that he was unable to introduce an interdisciplinary course in applied mathematics.

00:26:48	End of side.  End of tape.  End of interview.

END