Document Actions

Meet the Faculty

William D. Dunbar

Why I came to Simon's Rock

I came to Simon's Rock in 1993. It was not a good year to be in the job market, and for a long while it looked like I might end up going abroad to teach math in the Peace Corps. But I got a call in March or early April to come for an interview at Simon's Rock. I gave a sample class on non-Euclidean geometry, with white balloons that you could draw on with a felt-tip marker, and little plastic triangles that you could hook together edge-to-edge to make an approximation of a hyperbolic plane. I was really impressed with the students I met, so I was very happy when (some time later) I got the offer to come teach here.

Pullquote
❝My research interests center on the geometry and topology (no, not "topography") of three-dimensional spaces. This turns out to include such far-flung areas as crystallography and soap films and fractals and the classification of knots. I've even found it useful when teaching statistics ("you know, there's this nice picture that explains linear regression as orthogonal projection onto a plane...and then the correlation coefficient is just the cosine of...")❞
In the News

Personal web site

Bill Dunbar

William Dunbar

Mathematics
Division: Science, Mathematics and Computing
Appointment: 1993

Hall College Center
p: 413-528-7225
f: 413-528-7248
wdunbar@simons-rock.edu

 

Education:

ScB Brown University 1976 (Mathematics and Russian Studies)
MA Princeton University 1978 (Mathematics)
PhD Princeton University 1981 (Mathematics)

Professional History:

Rice University, G.C. Evans Instructor,1981 - 1984
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre, Brazil),Visiting Researcher, Fall 1994
Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil),Visiting Researcher, Spring 1995
University of Michigan, Assistant Professor, 1985 - 1988
Pennsylvania State University at Erie, Assistant Professor, 1988 - 1993

Publications/Book Chapters/Exhibitions/Performances:

Dr. Dunbar's work in geometric topology and differential geometry has been published in the journals Topology and Its Applications, Contemporary Mathematics, Indiana University Mathematics Journal, Annales de l’Institut Fourier, and the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society.

Other Activities:

Occasional appearances as bossa nova vocalist, with John Myers, at Jazz Ensemble concerts. Very occasional appearances in the Dance Concert.