Professor Goins featured speaker at University of Michigan's Dr. Marjorie Lee Browne Colloquium

01-13-2015

Professor Edray Goins was the featured speaker at the Dr. Marjorie Lee Browne Colloquium hosted by the Department of Mathematics at the University of Michigan as part of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Symposium on Monday, January 19, 2015.

"From the Diary of a Black Mathematician: My Journey from South Central to Studying Dessins d'Enfants"

In 1935, Marjorie Lee Browne graduated from Howard University. She spent a majority of the next 14 years traveling back and forth between Marshall, Texas and Ann Arbor, Michigan - alternating between teaching at Wiley College and taking classes at the University of Michigan. In 1939, Annie Beatrice Brown gave birth in Marshall to Eddi Beatrice. She spent a majority of the years 1936 - 1942 taking classes in education at the rival Bishop College - alternating between taking classes in education and being a stay-at-home mom. In 1972, Eddi Beatrice Brown gave birth to the speaker in South Central Los Angeles.

In the talk, he wove together the histories of various African Americans - Marjorie Lee Browne, David Blackwell, Sylvester Jim Gates, Evelyn Boyd Granville, Euphemia Lofton Haynes and Ronald Mickens - and the influence they have had on the speaker's journey to his ultimate calling in life: studying elliptic curves, stale coverings of the thrice punctured sphere, and Grothendieck's Dessins d'Enfants.

Professor Goins has been with Purdue University since 2004.