What Olga did for me

✍ Scribed by Alan Hoffman

• Book ID: 104156379
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 39 KB
• Volume: 280
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0024-3795
• DOI: 10.1016/s0024-3795(98)10004-6

✦ Synopsis

Olga was my shepherd. She took upon herself the role of guide, mentor and cheerleader for the young Ph.D.s hired into the Division. She suggested problems, encouraged our careers, sympathized with our failures and beamed at our successes. Everything I know about the care and feeding of junior mathematicians I learned from Olga.

I also learned a lot of matrix theory from her, although previous exposure to papers of Bruck, Chowla, and Ryser had already convinced me that matrices were wonderful tools for combinatorics. But Olga showed me how eigenvalue estimation could be interesting territory, and it has remained for me ... longer than it did for her ... a hobby which I resume every few years.

I am amazed that we wrote only two papers together, for everything 1 did during that period was influenced by her. And, in some respects, I think that motivating my whole career was the hope that Olga would be proud of me.