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The Lucian Professorship is named after Brother
Lucian Blersch, C.S.C., who was Professor of Engineering
at St. Edward's from 1938 until his retirement in 1971.
He died in 1986. The endowment given in his name has provided
support for purchases of science equipment for students
in the Natural Sciences and continues to do so. In addition,
a Natural Sciences professor is designated as Lucian Professor,
and receives some support from the endowment for their research
endeavors. Currently, the Lucian Professor also organizes
a seminar which brings a noted scientist to campus and which
highlights research in an area of the Natural Sciences.
The first designated Lucian Professor was Brother Daniel
Lynch, C.S.C., a prominent biologist who taught and conducted
research at St. Edward's from 1954 until his retirement
in 1996, and who was Professor Emeritus of Biology at the
time of his death in 1997.
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The
Accidental Theorist
by Stacia Hernstrom
Professor of mathematics Jean McKemie works
on geometric function theory during a slow
moment at the farmers market in Georgetown
this June.
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On Thursday afternoons during the summer, St. Edward’s
Professor of Mathematics Jean McKemie sells tomatoes. She
packs cartons of the ripe, red fruits from her Dale, Texas,
farm and drives to the Georgetown farmers’ market
to peddle her perishable wares. Unlike many of her fellow
vendors, though, McKemie relishes the slow days.
On slow days, she can concentrate on the piles of scratch
paper she has
brought with her to the market. “I get to a point
in my work where I need some uninterrupted time,”
she said. “I’ll sit there on the courthouse
lawn and work on my problem, and that gives me a couple
of hours to work.”
McKemie studies geometric function theory. “Imagine
you have an airplane
that you’re designing,” she explained. “What
shape should your wing surface be to minimize friction?
If you don’t have a particularly nice shape to work
with, like an awkward airplane wing, you might apply one
of the functions I study, and it transforms the entire geometry
of the problem. You take the awkward geometry, transform
it to the easy geometry, solve the problem and then carry
your answer back.”
McKemie makes her work sound simple, but the types of problems
she tackles can take years to solve. Once she solves a problem,
she has no idea how or when other researchers might use
it. “I solve problems because they interest me,”
she said simply.
As a graduate student, McKemie toyed with working in a
more applied field but realized that theory was what she
enjoyed most. After earning a dual bachelor’s degree
in math and physics, she worked at a research laboratory
studying underwater acoustics and earned her master’s
degree in mechanical engineering. “I spent a long
time trying to end up in the applied world, but it just
didn’t fit,” said McKemie, who went on to earn
her doctorate in mathematics.
Teaching her students to enjoy theory is often as difficult
as solving a problem. “When students get to college,
they’re convinced that there is a method of solution
for every problem and that they just haven’t taken
the right course yet where a teacher is going to stand up
and say, ‘Here’s how you do it,’ ”
she said. “There are a huge number of questions that
people don’t know the answers to. There’s a
constant battle with research students to think, ‘If
I were really good I could solve this instantly.’
I tell my students, ‘Everybody feels like this. You’ve
been working for two months and you can’t do it. I’ve
had this one I’ve been working on for four years,
and I can’t solve it.’ A lot of my job as a
teacher is cheerleading.”
As the university’s Lucian Blersch Professor, McKemie
cheerleads out of the classroom, too. Since taking the job
two years ago, she has worked with library staff to gain
access to an online database of mathematics journals so
that students have the best resources available. She has
established research stipends with Lucian funds for students
conducting summer research. Each spring, she organizes an
annual symposium on campus that brings in a renowned scholar
in the natural sciences.
Like Brother Daniel Lynch, CSC, the university’s
first Lucian professor, McKemie actively cares about her
students and their education. “I think mathematicians
at every level get frustrated along the way,” she
said. “The most rewarding part is just to see
my students make progress.”
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