The Mathematics Department recognizes the following faculty for their devoted service to students, our department and the university.
Retired Faculty:
Derek Chang, Rina Ling
Emeriti Faculty:
Vladimir Akis, Butrus Basmaji, Gerald Beer, Wayne Bishop, Marshall Cates, Paul Chabot, Grant Fraser, Shirley Gray, Nandal Jhunjhunwala, Richard Katz, Grigori Kolesnik, Robert Meyer, Hrushikesh Mhaskar, Gordon Nipp, Jagdish Prasad, P. K. Subramanian, Robert Tamaki, Nguyen Uy, Stewart Venit, Andrei Verona
Former faculty for whom departmental awards are named
Samuel Urner
Samuel Urner received his PhD from Harvard University in 1911 and then took a post-doc at the University of Wisconsin. He joined the faculty of the new Los Angeles Junior College in the early 1930s which become Los Angeles City College in 1938. He was on the faculty of Cal State Los Angeles from 1950 through 1958, a period of transition where the institution was giving classes at the LACC site, the future site of CSUN, and at the current East Los Angeles campus (we were not uniquely identified with this campus until 1958-59). He is author of Elements of Mathematical Analysis, Ginn, 1950.
Orda Lewis
Orda Lewis received her bachelors degree from Cal State Los Angeles in 1957 and immediately thereafter began her teaching career here, staying until 1975. She received a masters in math education from the University of Illinois in 1963. She was extremely active in campus life here, serving as Chair of the Academic Senate in 1970-1971. She is coauthor with Fred Marer and Samuel Skolnik of Arithmetic, Little-Brown & Co., 1960.
Charles Clark
Charles Clark received his PhD from the University of Virginia in 1944 and worked in the area of complex analysis. He came here from Oregon State University to be Department Chair with a directive to build a mathematics department. Like Orda Lewis, Clark was Chair of the Academic Senate in 1968-1969; he was also involved with the nascent computer center and was Faculty Athletics Representative to the NCAA. In 1971 he again became Department Chair in the wake of a nasty internal conflict. In that year, the Department welcomed five new members, all new Ph.Ds: Gerald Beer, Wayne Bishop, Marshall Cates, Gordon Nipp, and Stewart Venit who were to form the backbone of the department for decades. Charles Clark was known for his fairness and even disposition and for developing and mentoring young faculty. He was an avid golfer. Clark retired in 1981 and moved to northern California, visiting from time to time.
Carl Gordon
Carl Gordon was a true local, growing up in Alhambra. Carl received his PhD from UCLA in 1968 and worked in the area of logic (recursive function theory). He took a 2-year post-doc at the University of Utrecht and began his career at Cal State Los Angeles in 1970 where he remained until his death in 1996 in an automobile accident. Carl was known for his precision of mathematical expression, his willingness to help students and colleagues, and his unwillingness to abide pretense and bureacracy. He is coauthor with Neil Hindman of Elementary Set Theory: proof techniques, Haffner Press, 1975. In later years, he built various communication devices for the impaired at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilition Center, and became interested in long-distance running.
(Thanks to Gerald Beer for this information.)