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| Cover of Green's first published textbook Photo courtesy of author |
Simon Green started working at the University of South Carolina in September 1958. He arrived alongside his Tulsa colleague William A. Rutledge. Moving to South Carolina was a major change for Green. He'd previously taught at small private universities and was now at a flagship state university. Academically, USC offered a much higher level of academics than the schools Green had previously taught at. However, compared to most other flagship universities, USC lagged behind. The state's social, economic, and political problems had dragged the university down for much of the century. Hiring Green and Rutledge was part of a decade long effort to raise the level of academics.
A campus-wide effort to improve academics had begun at the start of Donald Russell's university presidency. Russell was not an obvious choice to spearhead the effort as he was not an academic. His studies hadn't advanced beyond the undergraduate level. Prior to arriving at the university, he'd worked in law and politics. Despite this, he evidently recognized the need to make USC into a more serious academic institution. He had achieved success, in part because his political experience allowed him to increase the resources provided by the state government.
In 1952, the year that Russell assumed the presidency, USC student enrollment stood at a low of 2,860 students. This was slightly smaller than Tulsa's student body, and only a fraction of population at neighboring state university. (The same year, enrollment at the University of Georgia was 5,197). During Russell's time as president, enrollment grew annually by roughly 10%. By 1959, enrollment stood at 5,109 students, putting the university on par with its peer institutes. The university's physical plant grew along with the student body. A number of new buildings, including a student union (the Russell House) and a library (the Thomas Cooper Library), were constructed.
Russell's main focus was not on enrollment or the physical plant but rather on the quality of the faculty. He worked to increase faculty salaries and supported the hiring of a number of prominent senior professors. Among those hired was math professor Tomlinson Fort.
Professor Fort had long served as faculty at the University of Georgia. His service included a lengthy term as department head. Fort was also active on the national-level. He had served as Associate Secretary of the AMS and as Vice President of the MAA.
Fort was an accomplished researcher, especially by the standards of southern universities. He'd received a PhD from Harvard University in 1912. He wrote a dissertation in analysis under the supervision of Maxime Bôcher. By 1958, he'd published about twenty papers and supervised seven PhD students.
Beyond his mathematical accomplishments, Professor Fort was well-suited for employment at a southern university as he had deep roots in the region. Not only had he grown up in Georgia, but his family was prominent within the state. For example, his grandfather had served as a U.S. Congressman during the antebellum.
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| Tomlinson Fort in 1948 University of Georgia Yearbook |
While Fort was the most prominent hire, the math faculty improved both in numbers and in training. In 1959, the faculty stood at five full professors, nine associate professors, and five assistant professors. This was four-times the size of the University of Tulsa's math department. Moreover, twelve professors (roughly half the department) held PhDs. By comparison, when Green arrived at Tulsa, only one of the math professors had completed a doctorate. Not counting Green and Rutledge, the PhD-holding faculty were the following:
- Wyman L. Williams: 1936 PhD from University of Chicago, 2 publications.
- Eucebia Shuler: 1934 PhD from Peabody College for Teachers of Vanderbilt University.
- Herman W. Smith: 1939 PhD from the University of Texas at Austin.
- Ernest A. Hedberg: 1936 PhD from the University of Missouri.
- Marguerite Zeigel Hedberg: 1932 PhD from the University of Missouri.
- Talmadge H Lee: 1953 PhD from the University of North Carolina.
- Raymond A Lytle: 1955 PhD from the University of Georgia.
- Johann Sonner: 1954 PhD from University of Munich, 9 publications.
- David D. Strebe: 1952 PhD from State University of New York at Buffalo, 2 publications.
- Robert Z. Vause: 1951 PhD from the University of North Carolina, 1 publication.
(The number of publications is taken from MathSciNet.)
Certainly, this faculty constituted a department largely focused on teaching, not research. In general, the math department lagged behind most departments in the region. For example, while both the University of Georgia and the University of North Carolina had well-established PhD programs, USC only offered a master's degree as the highest degree awarded. Nevertheless, the qualifications of the faculty were much higher than they'd been when Russell had been made president.
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| USC math faculty the year before Prof. Green arrived Garnet and Black Yearbook, 1959 |
Green probably hadn't been hired during Russell's presidency. Russell resigned in December 1957, about half a year before Green arrived. However, his replacement, Robert L. Sumwalt, largely carried on Russell's program of improving the quality of the faculty.
Intriguingly, Green was not the only European that arrived in the math department in 1958. In addition to Green and Rutledge, the university hired Johann Sonner. Just before his hire, Sonner had been working for the U.S. military at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (in Ohio). However, Sonner was originally from Germany. He was about twenty years younger than Green. He'd been born in Munich, near the border with Austria (where Green was from). Sonner was a teenager when World War Two broke out. During the war, he had served in the military for Nazi Germany. He was in the signal corps but was captured and spent time in a Soviet POW camp. It is fascinating to speculate how the Sonner, a former Nazi soldier, interacted with Green, a Jewish refugee from National Socialism. Unfortunately, any speculation must remain just that as the historical record is silent on the issue.
What was Columbia like away from the university? Columbia was similar to Little Rock in important respects. Both cities were (and are) state capitals. Columbia had a larger population, and its population was growing much more rapidly. About a quarter of a million people lived in the greater metropolitan area. (The population was reported as 257,961 in the 1960 U.S. Census.) This represented an almost 40% increase over the past decade (from an estimated 186,844 in 1950). By comparison, Little Rock's population stood at around 180,000 and grown by less than 2% over the last ten years.
Of the residents in the Columbia metro area, about a third were African-American. (More precisely, African Americans made up 32.4% of Richland county and 17.2% of Lexington county according to the 1960 U.S. Census.) This percentage was slightly higher than the population of Little Rock (which stood at roughly one-quarter).
Politically and socially, the atmosphere in Columbia was far different from anything Green had experienced before. Columbia, Tulsa, and Little Rock were all segregated cities, but Columbia was a segregationist stronghold, while Tulsa and Little Rock were minor outposts in comparison. In Oklahoma and Arkansas, public universities had been integrated on a limited basis since the 1940s. The 1957 Little Rock High School Integration Crisis had demonstrated that major and rapid integration efforts could provoke violent backlash. However, more limited efforts were accepted. For example, during his time at Philander Smith College, Green's colleague Georg Iggers had written a Letter to the Editor of the local newspaper urging the public library to integrate and had been active in the local NAACP chapter. The college also accepted its first White student, Dorothy Martin, during this time. None of this provoked a serious response, but in Columbia, such activities were met with an overwhelming rebuke.
In the years before Green arrived, students and professors in Columbia had seen first-hand how strong the counter-reaction to integration efforts could be. In 1955 and again in 1957, USC faculty who publicly criticized segregation were dismissed from their jobs. The campus remained completely segregated. The semester before Green arrived (in spring 1958), African American students from nearby HBCUs had come to the USC campus to apply for admission. They were met by White USC students chanting pro-segregation slogans, and university officials refused their applications. After they left, USC students burned a cross and hung an African American in effigy as further protest against integration.
USC's neighbor, the private HBCU Allen University, had integrated the year before Green arrived. That year the university admitted a White refugee from Hungary. This action had brought the wraith of state government down on the university. The State Board of Education (headed by the governor) had withdrawn certification of Allen's teaching programs, an action that prevented Allen graduates from teaching at public schools. Certification was only restored after the Hungarian student had left and several left-leaning faculty members were dismissed.
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| A student dormitory built during Russell's presidency |
Just as he had at Lincoln and Philander Smith, Dr. Green largely largely stayed out of the public eye and focused on mathematics. In May 1958 (a few months before he started teaching), regional newspapers like The State announced USC's new hires. The announcement of Green's hire made no mention of the fact that he'd taught at Philander Smith College. It did mention that he'd taught at Lincoln. Lincoln was not identified as an HBCU, but certainly the university's name would have raised a few eyebrows. For many White South Carolinians, Lincoln was regarded as a tyrant who had waged an unjust and destruction war against the state.
Dr. Green and his family were quickly welcomed by the Jewish community of Columbia. At the start of the semester, as Green's teaching was starting, his wife was made a member of the local chapter of Hadassah, a volunteer organization for Jewish women. Later that year she was made a member of the local branch of B'nai B'rith.
Dr. Green began reaping the benefits of the work he'd done in Tulsa. He had spend several years working with Dr. Rutledge and Dr. Schwartz on writing some mathematics textbook. The first book, written with Rutledge, was published in December. Titled Introduction of Algebra for College Students, the book is a treatment of the elementary algebra. They had written their book for college freshmen, and it covers topics like irrational numbers and matrices. The book's publication was announced in regional newspapers. Rutledge told reporters that he and Green had written the book with a specific pedagogical goal in mind. Rather than teaching students algebra through memorization, they worked to present the topic conceptually, as developing out of ten basic ideas. University of Michigan Professor Charles Brumfiel reviewed the book for the American Mathematical Monthly. Brumfiel gave a mixed review. He applauded the goal of developing the subject conceptually and de-emphasizing memorization. However, he felt the authors neglected to provide full proofs of important properties and used language in a sloppy and potentially confusing manner. Brumfiel concluded his review by stating that the book could be used by a competent instructor, but it should be carefully rewritten to address the issues he'd raised. The textbook seems to have been reasonably successful. It was reprinted multiple times with an edition being printed in 1968, almost a decade after the first printing.
The second book that Green published was Vector Analysis with Applications to Geometry and Physics. This book was authored with Rutledge and Schwartz. This textbook was more advanced. The book developed the theory of vector calculus alongside applications of the theory to topics in geometry and physics (e.g. electrostatics and magnetism). The book was also reviewed in the Monthly, this time by Wayne State Professor Melvin Henriksen. Henriksen expressed some frustration at the book's uneven level of mathematical rigor with the treatment alternating between a level appropriate for a physics course and a level more appropriate to an advanced math course.
During the winter break, Green traveled to the annual Joint Mathematics Meeting. That year the meeting while held at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Also traveling to the meeting were Green's colleagues Dr. Sooner and Dr. Williams. Green gave a presentation in one of the session on Geometry. The talks in this session were a mix of algebraic geometry and convex geometry. For example, Ernst Snapper gave an algebraic geometry talk in which discussed a generalization of the theory of the Hilbert polynomial. The speaker following Green was the distinguished geometer H. S. M. Coxeter. Coxeter talked about some unusual phenomenon displayed honeycomb packings in three-dimensions and why this phenomenon doesn't occur in two-dimensions.
Green's own talk, titled "Regular Transformations in Euclidean 4-Space," was a presentation on work stemming from his dissertation. The abstract describes the material as joint work with Dr. Rutledge. The talk appears to be an update on his dissertation work.
The University of South Carolina would appear to have been a good fit for Green. With its larger and better educated faculty, the math department provided him with more opportunities than any of the other universities he'd worked at. It also afforded him a chance to continue his collaboration with Dr. Rutledge. Outside of work, he and his wife seemed to have been warmed welcomed by the Jewish community. Despite all this, both Green and Rutledge left at the end of the year. Rutledge returned to Tulsa and returned to teaching at the University of Tulsa after spending the summer working for Douglas Aircraft. Green would move to Windsor, Canada. He left to hold a professorship at Assumption University. In the next post, we'll look at what he did there.
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| Authors' bio on the backflap of the textook Photo courtesy of author |
