Daily Archives: February 23, 2005

Feb 23 2005

Trip Down Memory Lane

“](http://www.ucsb.edu
Not a bad place to go to school, huh?

Wow! I was just cruising around the net and ran into a link to [[UCSB]]. Just out of curiosity, I decided to take a look and see if any of my old professors were still there. Some of the professors that I enjoyed the most or had the greatest impact on me while I was there are still there! [{self_href} Read on] for some thoughts on these professors and the school.

* [Charles Akemann](http://www.math.ucsb.edu/~akemann/:) Professor of my Rings, Fields and Groups class in modern mathematics. He used to take any student out to *Pizza Bob’s* (which is no longer there) on Thursday afternoons where we could discuss the higher meaning of the math he was teaching us (or anything else for that matter). I still have his book at home [[:-)]].
** [Martin Scharlemann](http://www.math.ucsb.edu/~mgscharl/.) Professor of the final part of calculus (I needed to finish the final little bit from high school). I’ll never forget a discussion we had on his big proof that got him tenured at [[UCSB]]. He published a proof entitled **Unknotting number one knots are prime*. I asked him, “Does this have any practical applications?” His response: “God, I hope not! If it does I’ll probably change fields!”. He certainly kept his classes entertaining!
* [Ömer EGECIOGLU](http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~omer/:) Taught an upper division class on data structures, and another on discrete mathematics for computer science. I loved his mid-terms! He never gave you questions you had seen in class, but rather questions that you *should* be able to figure out if you knew the material.
** [T. F. Gonzalez](http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~teo/:) Compiler design. What a bitch of a course. On the first day, he gave us the definition of a new language: **TFG3* that we were going to write a compiler for. He assured us that nobody would complete the work before the class finished… he was right.
* [Scott Marcus](http://www.music.ucsb.edu/MusicFaculty/Marcus01.htm:) I had Professor Marcus for two different music appreciation classes: one about J. S. Bach, and the other about W. A. Mozart. He also gave me and my girlfriend (at the time) a tour of the school bell tower. He truly changed the way I listen to music.

Maybe I’m not as old as I thought I was!