Dr. Charlie Franke<\/p>\n
By Ronald Infante<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I first met Charles Franke in September of 1958.\u00a0 Although he was only a couple of years older than I, he was my Calculus II instructor, freshly discharged from the US Army and eager to resume his mathematical studies.\u00a0 The school was Newark Rutgers, his alma mater, and he was enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the New Brunswick campus.\u00a0 Our textbook was superb, being very rigorous and yet, for the most part, readable by freshmen.\u00a0 Charlie assumed we knew all about limits as he launched into a rigorous treatment of the Riemann integral.\u00a0 For long forgotten reasons or maybe fear, we didn\u2019t point out our deficiency and muddled through as best we could.\u00a0 But he knew or sensed our difficulty and singled out those of us who did learn to do proofs by taking us under his wing and giving us more mathematics than is normal for undergraduates.\u00a0 It was exhilarating.<\/p>\n
Over the rest of my time at Newark Rutgers, I had at least one course with Charlie every semester.\u00a0 He was a marvelous lecturer.\u00a0 Each class began with the same question: \u201cAre there any questions from last time?\u201d\u00a0 These being disposed of he would start on the new material.\u00a0 Formal matters were reserved for the front board.\u00a0 From time to time, he would break from the formal material and write motivational things on a sideboard and then resume the formal presentation.\u00a0 This was a style that he continued to use at Seton Hall.\u00a0 But these classes were only part of his teaching.<\/p>\n
At the time, Newark Rutgers was housed in a motley collection of old buildings spread across several blocks of downtown Newark.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t really have a student center.\u00a0 So some of us gravitated to the math department between classes.\u00a0 It could be raucous, it could be argumentative, it could be scholarly, but it was always fun.\u00a0 Most of the students at Newark Rutgers, as was Charlie, were the children of blue-collar families.\u00a0 Thus, this was our first exposure to what an intellectual life might be like.\u00a0 Beyond all the mathematics Charlie taught me, the most important thing was that, if I so chose, I could belong to that life.<\/p>\n
Years later, we both landed in the \u00a0mathematics department at Seton Hall University, where Charlie provided a focal point for the energetic young faculty then..\u00a0 Charlie helped all of us, whether we were freshly minted Ph.Ds. entering into the profession or in the throes of writing our dissertations.\u00a0 Maybe the most important lesson was that research and teaching are complementary.\u00a0 Charlie was an excellent research mathematical and a marvelous teacher.\u00a0 One activity was used to supplement the other.<\/p>\n
Charlie\u2019s main research was in the area of Difference Algebra.\u00a0 It is difficult to explain what this about so let me just say that he proved the foundational theorems for a Galois Theory of linear difference equations.\u00a0 His papers are clearly written.\u00a0 The series stretch over a ten-year period and cover a wide range of topics culminating in a theorem on the normality of linear difference field extensions.\u00a0 It was a significant achievement and earned him a well-deserved promotion to full professor.<\/p>\n
Not everything we did in that bygone day was academic.\u00a0 There were significant extra-curricular events.\u00a0 These included faculty\/student softball and football games and an annual mathematics department dinner.\u00a0 But the most important was our end-of-semester excursions to the Star Tavern Pizzeria.\u00a0 After exams were over and final grades (hopefully) submitted, math students and faculty would repair to the Star Tavern for a few beers and a lot of pizza.\u00a0 Generally, we argued about the National Football League or baseball, topics we all had informed and deeply held opinions (or not).\u00a0 Charlie was an avid sports fan, attached in his fandom to the Mets and New York Giants.<\/p>\n
It was under Charlie\u2019s tenure as chairman that the department obtained the funding that allowed us to invite speakers from various universities.\u00a0 It is my understanding that the current Charles Franke Memorial Lectures derive from this series.\u00a0 I think I gave the first of these and it was a great pleasure to honor my friend, teacher and colleague in that way.\u00a0 Those of you who never had the chance to learn under Charlie have missed something special.\u00a0 Those of us who did have been much richer for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dr. Charlie Franke By Ronald Infante I first met Charles Franke in September of 1958.\u00a0 Although he was only a couple of years older than I, he was my Calculus II instructor, freshly discharged from the US Army and eager to resume his mathematical studies.\u00a0 The school was Newark Rutgers, his alma mater, and… Continue reading Dr. Charles Franke<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2083,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/math-cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/math-cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/math-cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/math-cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2083"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/math-cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/math-cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/math-cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/19"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/math-cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/math-cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/math-cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}