Sixteen
Philippe Tondeur
Philippe Tondeur is a research mathematician and a consultant for mathematics, science, and technology. His current interests include mathematics research and engineering; innovation policy; institutional governance; and leadership development.
In 2002 he retired as Director of the Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Previously he had served as head of the department of mathematics at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).
He earned an Engineering degree in Zürich, and a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Zürich. Subsequently he served as a research fellow and lecturer at the University of Paris, Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, and as an associate professor at Wesleyan University before joining the UIUC faculty in 1968, where he became a full professor in 1970.
He has published over one hundred articles and monographs, mainly on differential geometry, in particular the geometry of foliations and geometric applications of partial differential equations. His bibliography lists nine books. He has been a Visiting Professor at the universities in Buenos Aires, Auckland (New Zealand), Heidelberg, Rome, Santiago de Compostela, Leuven (Belgium), as well as at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zürich, the École Polytechnique in Paris, the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, Keio University in Tokyo, Tohoku University in Sendai, and Hokkaido University in Sapporo. He has given approximately two hundred invited lectures at various institutions around the world.
He has served as Managing Editor of the Illinois Journal of Mathematics. Professor Tondeur has been a recipient of the UIUC Award for Study in a Second Discipline (Physics), a UIUC Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, a Public Service Award from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), and the 2008 SIAM Prize for Distinguished Service to the Profession.
Professor Tondeur recently chaired the Board of Governors of the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications at the University of Minnesota. He served on the national Advisory Council for the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute at the Research Triangle Park in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has also served as a member of the National Committee on Mathematics of the U.S. National Research Council. He is a member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Canadian Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems (MITACS) Centre of Excellence and a Trustee of the Instituto Madrileño de Estudios Avanzadas-MATH (IMDEA-MATH) in Madrid. He is a member of the Committee on Science Policy of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, as well as of the Science Policy Committee and committees of the Mathematical Association of America.
In the interview that follows, we learn about the unconventional path that he took to becoming a mathematician. We also explore his decision to take on academic leadership. According to Tondeur, “Leadership is about accepting responsibility and acting on it. It’s not about getting a position; it’s about using a position for impact.” He may surprise some mathematicians with his claim that “research is a wonderful preparation for science administration and leadership, especially the failures.”
MP: You were born and educated in Zürich. Did you grow up speaking French and German?
Tondeur: French at home, German in school.
MP: So you are trilingual?
Tondeur: Well, my grandmother spoke Italian to me, and later I learned Spanish. Fluency in English came later. My first book in English was Halmos’s Finite-Dimensional Vector Spaces. I deciphered it with the help of a dictionary. I still admire Halmos.
Figure 16.1 Tondeur (left) at age fifteen with his older brother and nephew in 1947 in Zürich.
MP: What did your parents do?
Tondeur: My mother came from a family of teachers, and my father worked at a bank. I had an undirected childhood in terms of intellectual pursuits, also known as total liberty. I came from a modest economic stratum of Swiss society, and there were no attractive models to emulate. My own formation came through reading. I read voraciously as a child, and now that I am retired I again read voraciously.
MP: What did you read?
Tondeur: Everything, I had no guidance. My first extended view of the world and life was through books.
“I Found Geometry, and It Was Wonderful”
MP: When did science become an interest?
Tondeur: Very late. I basically stumbled into it. I started with a technical career and served an apprenticeship in a factory. I recognized that behind all this technology there is theory, which attracted me, so I did study engineering (in night school) and earned a degree in mechanical engineering. I won first prize in my graduating class, which encouraged me to continue on my journey. While progressing toward that degree, I recognized that there was a much wider world out there. I gravitated toward the world of science. My driving impetus was always more meta-thinking, more abstraction, and mathematics was the natural convergence point.
My initial journey within mathematics was of the same nature: toward the more abstract. Within mathematics I also meandered around in complicated ways, but finally I found geometry, and it was and remains wonderful. While delighting in almost all forms of mathematical thought, I settled on differential geometry, for it was just about the right mix of holding onto the world in a robust way but also in a wonderfully abstract way. It was just the perfect territory for the way my mind works. The larger framework is topology, and in later years, I got fascinated by geometric aspects of partial differential equations. In fact, that’s basically where I have done all my research over forty years, while being interested in almost all forms of mathematics.
MP: You said that most of your study had been undirected. Were there teachers who stand out in any special way, who encouraged you and said, “You’re a good student, you should do more of this?”
Tondeur: There were a few key voices that said, “You are good at math,” and this was an important encouragement—“Oh, OK, I’m good at math.” First there was Viktor Krakowski as math teacher in my preparation for university admission (I ranked second nationally in that year’s Abitur exam for students seeking university admission outside the public school system). At the University of Zürich there was Rolf Nevanlinna, who said at one point, “You should have an academic career.” And I was totally astounded. He said, “You are a natural for it.” So I became his assistant. I was thinking of perhaps going into teaching, but I was not really contemplating an academic career up to that point. I searched for quite a while. Where could I find some activity that would be commensurate with my dreams? I had huge literary interests and continue to have them, as a reader but not as a writer. Mathematics was wonderful—a mix of contemplation and action. I’m not technically brilliant, so I had to find a subject that allowed my imagination to flow freely, and differential geometry was just right. There is a natural affinity. I suppose it is like a musician who discovers an instrument which speaks to him, and he embraces it for life.
MP: In talking with mathematicians and asking them how they think about problems, we hear many of them say, “Well, I try to develop some kind of geometrical picture.”
Tondeur: Definitely. Everything has a geometrical aspect for me. It took me a long time to find out that’s what I really loved and was good at. You find a pursuit in concordance with your natural disposition, and you are a very lucky person. I am a geometer.
MP: Nevanlinna was a famous person to be working with. What was it like?
Tondeur: Huge! Dominant. I mean, not so much in technical terms, but here was this Prince of Mathematics and this glorious subject that prominent people were treating as an important life pursuit. It was his personality, his eminence—the weight of this intellectual persona. I thought, “Oh, so it’s a good subject; I could spend my life doing it.” Prior to Nevanlinna, I had met other excellent teachers, but with them it wasn’t so seductive. And historical figures were too remote.
A Peripatetic Mathematician
MP: So you finished your PhD in 1961.
Tondeur: Actually, I had just about nine months for the whole PhD studies after my diploma. Nevanlinna said that I should become his assistant, and I started working on a problem and solved it. That was it.
MP: That’s fast.
Tondeur: Then I went to Paris on a Swiss Science Foundation fellowship, and thus my postdoctoral wanderings began.
MP: You were a bit of a peripatetic mathematician there for a few years.
Tondeur: Yes. I had no plan. I was simply searching for a place that would be intellectually meaningful. By then it had to lead to an academic career, and where would that be? I had no idea. America was beckoning, but France was interesting, so I went to Paris, and then I got an invitation from Harvard. In my ignorance, I had no concept of Harvard, but it was an offer (from Raoul Bott), and so I came. I asked for a visa and came to the United States and never went back. Everything was accidental.
MP: There’s an important factor here, I think, that made it easier for you in some sense to come to a different country, namely your command of languages.
Tondeur: Yes, it was an essential factor.
MP: Someone who’s been educated in the United States would not necessarily think about going to France or Germany.
Tondeur: I have taught in four languages—in Spanish in Argentina, in English in the United States (and the United Kingdom, New Zealand, as well as other countries), in French in Paris, and in German in Switzerland and Germany—but language never was an issue. The dominant issue for me was: Where could I act optimally? I didn’t think about it strategically but, rather, instinctively. You have to do things commensurate with your talents and limitations and fulfill . . . some dream. So, I tried to assess where the impact would be positive. You do things, achieving which will lead to further goals. In that sense, I was not really ambitious, just evaluating opportunities as they arose. Prestige did not enter my thinking—yet I was an egotistical young person, I wanted a good job, but I wanted a job where I could do good at the same time. I didn’t really aim for the highest imaginable position; it also had to be compatible with what I felt I could deliver.
Figure 16.2 The dashing Tondeur at age twenty in Zürich.
Actually, in all my wanderings I always had the sense that I should complete what I had set out to do. I would first fulfill the set task, and I did lots of things which were sometimes not optimal careerwise, but I did them out of a sense of duty which comes from my Swiss background.
Figure 16.3. Iurie Caraus with Tondeur at the International Congress of Mathematicians, 2006, in Madrid.
Figure 16.4 Tondeur at the University of Bonn, 1967.
MP: You are describing a strong work ethic?
Tondeur: When I accept responsibility for a task, I try to complete it. It doesn’t matter if it’s profitable or not. If I signed up, I try to do it until completion. I’ve had this discipline, which is ingrained and which comes from the Swiss educational system. It was beaten into me.
MP: So what eventually attracted you to Illinois?
Tondeur: An offer that looked attractive—a tenured offer.
MP: I noticed your first appointment was as an associate professor.
Tondeur: While I was at Harvard, ShiingShen Chern invited me to Berkeley. In my first course assignment, I replaced Charles Loewner who fell ill and taught my first differential geometry course. Then Wesleyan University offered me a tenured position as a start. Illinois looked great, and I had visited prior to their offer. It was a big university with many eminent people. It turned out to be a fabulous place.
MP: So once you landed in Illinois, you didn’t leave except to come to the NSF.
Tondeur: Yes. I had several offers over the years, but I didn’t see any compelling reason to change. Moreover, Illinois was very liberal in its leave policy (thank you, Paul Bateman), and I served in many visiting positions all over the world. By a rough count I gave about two hundred lectures on my research interests of the moment in many countries. There is fantastic freedom in a huge place where people can pursue many interests, so that was the charm. As chair (much later), I could similarly accommodate people wanting to do different things. In a small department, you are more constrained.
Figure 16.5 Professor Emeritus Tondeur at age 70.
MP: So you started at Illinois in 1968, and it was in 1996 that you became the department chair. I know that you were a distinguished teacher as well as a researcher. When did your interest in teaching emerge? Was it always there?
Tondeur: Always. I spent a great amount of effort on teaching, or learning through teaching. I would try to understand where my students came from, what their level of preparation was, and then I would try to do the best possible teaching job within these constraints. If they didn’t have the background they were supposed to have, I would teach it. I like teaching; it is fun, and I liked it because I paid attention to the students’ needs. I was not a very standard teacher. I got lots out of the ordinary assignments. That was the wonderful thing about Illinois. If you do it, OK, we’ll find a way to accommodate you. I had fantastic freedom. I repeated very few courses. Most courses I taught just once. It was an incredible education. I have wandered through vast stretches of mathematics; yet mathematics is so immense that I still feel that I grasp only a small part of it.
Avoid Boredom
MP: Do you think you’re the sort of person who gets bored easily?
Tondeur: Never bored. I mean, I avoid things that bore me.
MP: Yes, but how about the fact that you’re constantly moving on to teach new courses, although you say you’re also doing that to learn new material.
Tondeur: Yes, I seek out new things. I try not to be in situations which are repetitive.
MP: Let’s go back to Switzerland for a minute. I’ve known a few other mathematicians from Switzerland and in particular from Zürich, and they have been very effective teachers. They regarded it as a good activity. Do you think that Protestant work ethic is part of the explanation for that? Let me be more direct: Are mathematicians from Switzerland likely to be more attuned to teaching than mathematicians from other countries?
Tondeur: I don’t really think so. When I studied there, there was a tradition of teaching being important, but this is not unique to Switzerland. This country’s (the United States) attitude toward teaching is changing. We are in a corrective phase, after some excesses, and teaching is becoming again more important, as it should be. For eight centuries, universities have been about teaching. What’s the highest degree at the university? It’s a doctorate. What is a doctorate examination? You have to teach your research. Your results are accepted after you present your research to a committee. So teaching of your research is the alpha and omega of academic life. It’s been true since the first university was established, and it’s true in the American research university too, even if it has sometimes been forgotten.
Contact Hours—Wrong Measure for Teaching
MP: There are various explanations for the apparent decline or de-emphasis on teaching in research institutions in the United States. I remember talking one day with Al Tucker, who was the chair at Princeton for twenty years. He was there from 1933 to 1970. If you look at the collection of people who were on the faculty then, it was a world-class group.
Tondeur: Stellar.
MP: Of course, he cared very much about teaching, and you can see that passed on to his two mathematician sons, Alan and Tom. I asked him what Princeton was like in those days in terms of the educational aspect of their program. He said that teaching was very important, and there was none of this business of people always seeking ways of reducing their teaching time to do research. He said, you taught—this I found absolutely mind- boggling—in those early days, you taught fifteen contact hours, and you did your research.
VIGRE—Reminder of Fundamentals
Tondeur: Princeton continues to have a high appreciation of teaching. I don’t know about every single case, but it has had extraordinary success in inculcating the value of teaching in its faculty and students. I think Princeton has continued to have a high teaching ethic and has fantastic role models, for example, Ingrid Daubechies, Charles Fefferman, Peter Sarnak, and Elias Stein, among many others. They are great teachers who love teaching with a passion. Princeton is still a model. The number of contact hours [hours in the classroom] is a poor parameter of teaching. We probably have to get away from that. It’s not a meaningful measure. It’s a natural thing when you seek a job that you prefer a lower number of contact hours, but that’s not the right measure because your teaching takes many forms. I think for the people of quality we are looking for in a research university, it is people who should have a sense of responsibility for teaching. Princeton faculty do this. They generate other such people. I had and have such colleagues in Illinois who were definitely shaped by Princeton, and they are fantastic examples of how teaching is crucial. Today’s university mantra is the integration of research and education. Teaching is not separate. We teach through research. That’s the model we are pursuing. Activities like NSF’s VIGRE program (Vertical Integration of Research and Education in Mathematics) are very much about reminding the math faculty of the United States that teaching is a crucial part of their mission.
MP: You speak with great passion about this integration. I certainly had some professors who said that research and teaching go hand-in-hand and that it’s very hard to do one without the other, but you articulate it with passion. Please expand on this a bit, because I know you worked very hard on the VIGRE program.
Tondeur: Actually, Don Lewis invented this program, and when I came to NSF, it was already in place. All I had to do was to build the Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS) budget to be able to fund it (as well as a new program that I initiated, the Focused Research Group program, and many other things). The background to VIGRE was the assessment of the Odom Report. Basically, the mathematics discipline in the United States has a problem. We don’t recruit enough people. Fulfilling this need is part of the national agenda and the mathematics community’s responsibility. Fantastic new mathematics is being created, but if you don’t have the people, the future is at risk. I took the existing VIGRE program and worked on it. The NSF spent a lot of money on it and tried to promote and expand it later under successor solicitations with different acronyms but the same general aim.
Fundamentally, it is about the mathematics research faculty of the United States taking responsibility for the pipeline in the mathematical sciences. They should show the intellectual landscape to their freshmen because then they will carry that interest and awareness into their sophomore year. The reality is that we lose so many of those students who enrolled as freshmen, young men and women who came with the idea that they know math and might want a career in it. But after two years we have this “Valley of Death,” this huge attrition, and I think that it’s our responsibility to keep students interested. We get them for two years, and we have to succeed better in keeping them. That’s our responsibility: we can’t blame it on drugs and alcohol and Facebook.
We have it in our power to influence them. Why do they disappear? Why do they not go on? VIGRE is giving you resources to achieve a better result. That’s one level. Where do the graduates come from? They come from undergraduates who decided to do more math and go to graduate school. And then when you get them as graduate students, you have another immense opportunity to treat them well and do fantastic things with them. And then they get their degree, and there is yet another level—what will they do now? They have to prove themselves and get a career going. That’s a post-doc, right? And VIGRE attacks these three points in different order, while the focus is on the graduate students.
I hear a lot of comments to the effect that it’s an immense task in addition to everything else we do. But I think it’s central to what we do; it’s not in addition. The successful VIGRE programs are those where a significant number of the faculty have taken responsibility to act, and to mentor, and to show the glory of the math discipline. That happens at all levels, the upper undergraduate level, and then graduate and postdoc levels, and VIGRE has had significant impact. In some sense VIGRE is really a reminder of the fundamental responsibilities of research faculty. The NSF is responsible for the discipline, and under the leadership of Don Lewis, its DMS decided to start this program. We used research money to do this, not waiting for some miracle education money to show up, and we have devoted lots of energy and money to it and its successor programs. It promotes cultural change. Some people complain that it’s directive. I prefer to say it’s a reminder of fundamentals, reinforced by grant money. It’s essential for the discipline.
MP: So you’d like to see a reawakening, a reestablishment of what may have been a tradition of the past?
Tondeur: Yes, I would see it as a corrective. Research and higher education are integrated activities, and VIGRE is a reminder of our responsibility in this respect. Now we cannot, as research faculty, do everything in mathematics education. But we have lots of undergraduates who show up in our schools, 16 million of them, with 2 million enrolled in undergraduate mathematics courses. How come we don’t retain more of these students? I think many of these young people walk away from potentially fantastic careers because they do not find out in their short time what it is we do as research mathematicians. Many people do very well with it, but we need more of them. My perspective is, from a national point of view, that we don’t do nearly enough.
MP: So VIGRE, it appears, is making a difference.
Tondeur: It is. But there are many DMS activities aiming toward the same goal. VIGRE and its current successor programs support graduates, postdocs, and research experiences for undergraduates. DMS supports them and individual investigators in many different forms. These programs have multifaceted aspects. Many successful research agendas have support money embedded toward these very same agendas: VIGRE is just one very visible component of DMS’s investments.
MP: This is addressing the pipeline issue in a very fundamental way. Occasionally I hear others talk about the obligation that mathematics departments have to people who are not necessarily going to be finishing graduate degrees. We saw the Rochester experience where the graduate mathematics program was almost eliminated. That was very painful. A few months ago I was talking to a fairly well-known mathematician who somehow got involved with some mathematics for business students. Of course most math departments view business schools as beneath them, or composed of people whom they don’t necessarily regard as academic. Over the last fifteen years or so the profile of business students has risen dramatically, for the simple reason that they can go out and make a lot of money. This individual talked about a conference that was set up for business school deans, and the topic was mathematics for business students. On most campuses the relationships between business departments and mathematics departments are not very good. If a member of the mathematics faculty has been assigned a course in business mathematics, other department members will often say, “Oh you poor guy, that’s terrible.” And the person teaching it will often come back and say, “This is terrible. These students aren’t with it, they’re not thinking very much about the actual content.” What can we do to be more relevant in some sense to what it is they’re doing, because we know that business uses very sophisticated mathematics these days? Deborah Hughes Hallett was one of the people at the conference. She actually was asked to send out invitations to quite a large number of deans. She found that the interest level was very high, and she said it was very uncomfortable to turn people away. She had to send out “so sorrys” to over thirty business school deans.
Tondeur: Amazing.
MP: They came, and there weren’t many mathematicians there.
Tondeur: A missed opportunity.
MP: Well, they wanted the business people to talk with the deans in particular. Deb said that more than one of these deans spoke to her in social settings, saying “Why have you invited us? Why do you want to talk to us? On our campuses we can’t even get the math faculty to talk to us.” So the upshot of the meeting was some rather good communication. That’s just an example, but I think it bears on the pipeline question, if we are not connecting with the so-called client disciplines.
Integration of Research and Education and Its Impact on the Economy
Tondeur: I think of the pipeline issue in the broadest sense. I don’t think of the pipeline as only leading to the production of research mathematicians. I think of the pipeline as creating people who are comfortable with mathematical thinking and technology in all fields. That’s the broad pipeline issue. My dean at Illinois wanted these people to be taught by mathematicians, not by journeymen instructors, because, I think, it’s again the issue of integration or research and education, ultimately impacting our economy.
Mathematics is a key technology in our knowledge economy. Many new techniques require an enormous amount of mathematical sophistication. It relates to our pipeline issue. In the university environment, the math department has to be involved in this, and from my experience at Illinois, we have been. We are very interested in this in a purely pragmatic fashion of faculty positions, tuition income, and general financial support, but also intellectually because that’s within our mission. It’s getting better in this country to recognize this responsibility of the math profession, to take a hand in all this. If we don’t, we kill our future, and we kill our resources.
MP: There’s another powerful force to deal with that seems to be growing, and that is the fraction of our faculties that are part-time.
Tondeur: That’s a bad development, but I have no solution to propose. I understand how it’s economically driven, and I think it’s a negative development. The equivalent in high school education in this country is people teaching math and science without disciplinary qualification, and I cannot think of this as a good development. What I could do as the chair was to just refuse to use part-time faculty. I give credit to my predecessors in the chair’s office at Illinois who just wouldn’t allow it, and we didn’t do it.
MP: So there was a tradition.
Tondeur: Yes, a tradition that you have to maintain and continue to argue for—we didn’t want part-time faculty in the classroom.
MP: Illinois should be congratulated.
Becoming Chair at Illinois
Tondeur: The dean gets credit here because he has to put up the resources. And the chairs have to fight for these resources. Deans also have a vision of intellectual quality—it’s not all about money. In summary, I have nothing positive to say about the part-time trend.
MP: At Illinois, you eventually became the chair. How did that come to pass?
Tondeur: Somewhat reluctantly. Research faculty do not really like to take on this responsibility, and so chairs are recruited by colleagues and the dean. In 1996 I was one of the key people involved in the discussion about who would take on this job, who would be condemned to take it, and I was reluctantly drafted by my dean with the recommendation of the faculty as the least evil choice. It wasn’t something I had planned to do. The dean said he would like me to think about this job, so I said yes, if that’s what you ask me to do, and here are the issues. I was willing to negotiate about resources, and it dragged on for a long time. Finally he committed to fully fund what is now the postdoctoral J. L. Doob Research Assistant Professor program as a condition for my accepting the position of chair.
MP: With a quarter of a million dollar price tag?
Tondeur: In three permanent annual increments. Over the three years of my tenure as chair the dean put up a multiple of this in new resources for the department in order to support all that was needed.
MP: You said that you were brought to the position somewhat reluctantly and that you would be considered the “least evil choice.”
“It’s All About Leadership”
Tondeur: It is of course more nuanced than that. Before I accepted the position, I had communicated essential departmental needs to the dean.
MP: You did that, and I think that’s a big plus. But there is a problem, and it’s not just with mathematics departments by a long shot, because in some sense you’re elevating the importance of leadership in a mathematics department. That’s very hard to attack because the general perception of most mathematics faculty is that it’s the last thing they want to do. They’re not likely to be rewarded for being leaders, they may not even be respected as much anymore because their colleagues are far more interested in research. Although it’s common for research mathematicians to be producing somewhat fewer papers as they get into their fifties and sixties, by that age many attitudes toward departmental leadership are fixed.
Tondeur: Yes. It’s all about leadership.
MP: How do you attack this?
Tondeur: Leadership is about accepting responsibility and acting on it. It’s not about getting a position; it’s about using a position for impact. I think of academic leadership as being in charge of a field of action, similar to being in charge of a research agenda. It means you are going to work toward realizing a specific agenda, which has to be embedded in the general strivings toward the ideal of the university. The chair is there to improve a specific department. So, it’s an action program. I had no interest in the title. The main issue is the acceptance of responsibility. If you are not willing to do that, then you shouldn’t become the chair.
Figure 16.6 “Pushing an agenda in a recalcitrant environment”—Tondeur’s playful characterization of some leadership experiences.
For me the process of being recruited consisted of working myself to the point where I would want to do it. You have to think out a realistic action program which will further the goals of the enterprise. It takes a while: it took me two months to figure out before I was ready to accept. It is similar to working on research problems. You have a conjecture, and therefore you have to work on this and improve that, and so on, and you need specific tools, and finally you achieve some of it, not all of it. I know where I want to go, and I also have the experience from research that you don’t necessarily achieve what you set out to do. What you find is actually different, but you are quite happy in the sense you have a goal, and by doing steps toward that goal you find out that actually it is different from what you thought, so you have to be flexible. I think research is a wonderful preparation for science administration and leadership, especially the failures. You fail mostly in research. You try thousands of things: most don’t work, but a few do, and those successes are your achievements and define your life’s work. Research is a tremendous preparation for leadership.
MP: Most leaders don’t talk much about failing.
Tondeur: Yes, but it’s essential to know how to deal with failure. Often you don’t succeed, so leadership is also about dealing with failure; it’s about restructuring the issues so that you can succeed. Our published mathematical research record is only about the successes, and so I think dynamic leadership is very similar to research. Now, what’s different in a leadership position is that you have to engage other people. That’s a new element; it’s not you alone. That’s a big difference.
MP: You’re good at it.
Tondeur: I turned out to be good for the two specific leadership positions I was entrusted with in my career.
MP: What’s your secret?
Tondeur: I find people interesting. I can appreciate a wide variety of people with diverse talents. So, for me, the question is how can people who have these skills or particularities or even quirks be mobilized to use their special talents for the purpose of the enterprise? It’s like directing an orchestra. You have these different instruments, and I’m delighted that they are so different. Oboists are famous for eccentricity. It’s wonderful to try to make great music out of the whole ensemble, including oboists (musicians will understand). I don’t like slackers, but basically if you concentrate on those who are willing to work and if there are enough of them, then you’ll succeed.
MP: You’ve obviously had success at Illinois as a chair.
Tondeur: It is what brought me to the attention of people searching for a new director at NSF’s Division of Mathematical Sciences.
MP: So NSF knocked on the door.
Tondeur: Yes, Margaret Wright asked me to think about this job. Again, I was reluctant.
MP: How long did it take you to make a decision?
Tondeur: At the time I was asked, I had achieved an initial huge success at Illinois, and in the process I had developed an enlarged sense of responsibility to advance the profession. I thought that if I could climb this mountain, maybe I could climb a higher mountain too.
“I Brought My Checkbook”
MP: Could we expand on the huge success?
Tondeur: Transforming the state of mind of the department. It sounds a bit arrogant, perhaps, but it was a despondent department, and it became an excited department. That’s a major change. It regained its faith in its destiny. The postdoctoral program brought new blood to the department, and then I took down a wall. We needed a seminar room, but we couldn’t find one. I said, two of these small rooms will be the seminar room. Rip out the separating wall. In a hundred-year-old historic building (majestic Altgeld Hall), you don’t rip out walls, so there is the symbolic significance. I needed funding to do it. I brought my checkbook to the critical meeting and said if nobody else pays, I’m going to write the necessary check. I finally didn’t pay any of it; the dean paid for it.
MP: You felt very strongly about it.
Tondeur: I was willing to write the check. It’s only because I was willing to that I didn’t have to. I expressed priorities: I put money in the terrific research library collection; we got this new seminar room; we got postdocs; and we recruited well. And my successors creatively built on and enlarged that success.
MP: You’ve mentioned some of the things you did to revive and to inject a new spirit.
Tondeur: Money is important.
MP: Can you tick off a few other things?
Tondeur: The recruiting of new colleagues. It was constantly on my mind. We made a huge effort. My first recruitment year was a fabulous success.
Figure 16.7 The Brothers Tondeur (Michel, Edmond, and Philippe) in Zürich in 2007.
The National Science Foundation
MP: So you accomplished a great deal in a very short period of time, actually. You had a plan.
Tondeur: Yes. Faculty. What’s next? Students. Postdocs. What else is important? The library, a seminar room, online teaching, the merit workshops. So I had a list, and we made big headway in a very short time. So when the call came from NSF, I already had a second year of big successes, and I was thinking much about the mathematical sciences in a broader way. My experience in the mathematical sciences has continually reinforced the perception of the university as part of a worldwide network for scholars and students. Illinois is just one node, so in the case of the call from NSF, I was being asked to do this for the United States piece of the global math network. It didn’t take me long to think about it. I sent them my dossier, and then nothing happened, and I went my way without thinking further about it. It turned out to be a long process. I said, “I want to finish three years at Illinois. I’m not going to leave before that.” I thought, once I had given three years of leadership to my department and had been successful, it seemed like an interesting challenge to try to broaden this activity. There also was an urgency of time because I was getting older, and if I wanted to do something outrageously ambitious, I had to do it now.
MP: You don’t act very old.
Tondeur: Not the spirit, but the body is creaking.
MP: So the NSF opportunity represented a chance to do more with the network? Scale it up?
Tondeur: Scale it up. Mathematics is a global science. I have this life experience of the universality of the mathematical sciences. If you look at my bibliography, you will find 17 different research collaborators, and they come from around the world, so for me it’s global science. Working at Illinois is working for the progress of the mathematical sciences. This NSF job was an opportunity to do the chair’s job on a national scale. The worldwide scale would be another, but there is no platform for that. The United States has been the dominant place for science, and it impacts the world in a big way. Everybody’s watching what’s happening in the United States, so prioritizing mathematics and statistics in the United States has a huge impact on the support for the mathematical sciences throughout the world.
MP: Did you know Don Lewis before coming to NSF?
Tondeur: No, but he was a well-known figure. Once I was drawn into NSF I talked often with him.
MP: How about Rita Colwell, the director of NSF? Did you know her?
Tondeur: Not at the time, but she did appoint me as director of DMS. Once the search was finished, recommendations for director were submitted, she interviewed me, and thus my relationship with her started.
MP: Her inclinations toward mathematics seemed to be quite positive.
Tondeur: Yes.
MP: Was that any kind of factor in your thinking?
Tondeur: No, because you have to interact with whoever is in charge. You have to be pragmatic. But Rita Colwell turned out to be a great supporter of the mathematical sciences. A critical factor for our success was the existence of the Odom report, issued in March 1998, with the cumbersome title “Report of the Senior Assessment Panel of the International Assessment of the U.S. Mathematical Sciences.” The report committee was chaired by William E. Odom, Lt. General, USA, Retired, former Head of the National Security Agency. (He died in 2008.) This report was the result of his and Don Lewis’s initiative and leadership, and I was lucky to come in waving this report.
MP: Well, in looking back, what in your NSF experience, as the director of DMS, has given you particular pleasure?
Tondeur: Working with talented people toward a huge goal. And the huge goal is to allow the mathematical sciences to play their proper role in science and society. For science, mathematics is a driving force, and it is critical for the future of society, globally, not just for the United States. And education is a part of it. The biggest satisfaction is to advance the recognition of mathematics as a fundamental force and the heart of civilization.
(The interview continues in 2005.)
MP: What are your thoughts on current NSF funding?
Tondeur: My readings, observations, and travels over the three years since leaving the DMS have convinced me that we are not even remotely doing enough to live up to our current leadership role in science and technology. We were thrust into this post–World War II leadership role by visionaries advancing the public investments in our future with boldness, and with the scientific community’s sense of common purpose, this advocacy was very successful. The results have been truly magnificent. They have massively contributed to our prosperity, health, and security.
Basic research is the driver of innovation. Knowledge creation translates into economic growth. Much of this innovation has spurred the current worldwide dynamics in science, engineering, and technology. But this global spread has turned into an economic race in which we are not running at our full capacity; in any case we are not running sufficiently fast to live up to our leadership responsibility.
“We’re Not Investing Enough in Research and in People”
MP: What are your thoughts about U.S. science leadership?
Tondeur: There is evidence that the U.S. leadership in science and technology is eroding.
Our economic strength is based on past superior innovative capabilities. How is this going to look in the future, when the United States is currently seventeenth in the world in the proportion of college-age population earning science and engineering degrees? We are not investing enough in basic research, and we are not investing enough in people. The country needs to act more boldly on its science and technology agenda. There is no way to balance the federal budget by squeezing investments in our scientific future. Our investments in basic research as well as mathematics and science education need to increase at a high rate. The NSF budget request for fiscal year (FY) 2006 is close to $3 billion below the authorized target in the “NSF doubling bill,” passed December 2002.
MP: What about the mathematical sciences?
Tondeur: Funding research in the mathematical sciences has fared relatively well at NSF, doubling from 1998 to 2004. But even NSF’s support of the mathematical sciences as a priority area is faltering in the budget request for FY 2006. It does contain language about the mathematical sciences being a priority area, but not a single additional dollar is budgeted for DMS above the previous year’s level. For a funding agency, this is talking but not walking.
MP: What about the longer term?
Tondeur: Funding for the mathematical sciences will keep pace with expanding needs only if the trend in federal funding of basic research takes a dramatic turn for the better (this is 2005). What is needed? I believe that a threefold investment in NSF’s portfolio is a target to aim at. An incredible amount of first-class research is left unfunded. Many mathematics and science education innovations are not tested out in pilot programs for future widespread implementation in our faltering public schools. This ultimately means an underinvestment in the development of our scientific workforce at the very time when a soon-to-retire scientific workforce is going to have to be replaced. At the same time it is a fantastic opportunity to advocate for a massive national effort in mathematics and science education and to involve an increasingly diverse population in this national effort.
MP: What about the role of professional associations? There are the Mathematical Association of America, the American Mathematical Society, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges, the American Statistical Association, and many more. What do you think they might be doing that they’re not doing to improve the place of mathematics in this world culture in order to convince this larger public that mathematics is really important?
Coordination—the Weakest Part
Tondeur: I think the coordination is the weakest part. I think it’s a cacophony. All the players pursue very well-meaning, very sound, very good-looking small agendas, but there is no coordination to make it more successful. What would make it more successful is if there were more coordination, and that seems to be the weakest part of the effort. All these voices are there, but they don’t produce a sound which registers on a political level or in the general consciousness of the public. People don’t hear what we are discussing here. The general public, the Congress, which reflects the general public, only vaguely hears this noise, and then they forget it and get on to other more urgent-looking business. We haven’t been successful in getting this basic message across, or not successful enough. I think there is an increasing sense, an increasing awareness on the part of many math career people, frustrated by more and more evidence of lessening mathematical university courses, quotas, and so forth, that having a national agenda for increasing awareness of mathematics is something important. But our general society is incredibly slow in registering this concept and its importance. Reading is something you cannot live without. But mathematical thinking is something you will not be able to live without in the future either. It’s of huge significance, and we have not been successful in convincing the general public of this fact. This is not a criticism of what individual groups do; they do it admirably well with an enormous sense of responsibility, but there is no integrated effort to do that. It is in the minds of the individual players, but you don’t hear the big voice.
MP: Over the past several years there has been increased interest expressed by different societies about getting the ear of Congress and getting on their radar screen. I’ve also heard some say that the only thing that’s really going to sell to Congress is research—but it’s going to have to be directly tied to science because Congress doesn’t understand mathematical research. Then others have said that if you’re thinking about Congress there is one part of the whole mathematical enterprise that most of them think they know something about, and that’s education. But that’s pooh-poohed by many, particularly those from research institutions, so I think what you’re saying about some coordination here could go a long way. Maybe the way to get to Congress is by coming through an education portal.
Figure 16.8 Tondeur, a delegate of the International Mathematical Union, meeting with the U.S. delegation to the International Congress of Mathematicians, 2006, in Santiago de Compostela.
Tondeur: I wouldn’t underestimate Congress even if the process is slow. There are things it responds to better, but as with most initiatives, it requires an intense education process. The math priority area, as conceived at NSF, was talking about three things: namely, the development of the discipline, which is a research agenda; the connections with science, which are the interactivity and interdisciplinary science-driving force; and education. All these need to be integrated. The most important thing we do as researchers about education happens in the classroom, seminars, working groups, and through our mentoring. Our players are active at this level, and that’s what we think and do most about. It has a huge impact on the whole enterprise. It’s not “If you do this, then you don’t have to do the other, or only do research”—these activities are all integrated. Congress is responsible for the entire national agenda, so you have to impress on its members the importance of the special mathematical sciences agenda. It’s natural that for Congress the education agenda is the most obvious aspect. But it’s also about the workforce, jobs, the economy, tax revenues. It is all integrated. You can’t have good mathematics education without the Andrew Wiles and Grigory Perelmans of the world. We provide support for the whole spectrum of activities. All the professional societies you mentioned provide contributions at some point of this spectrum. Better coordination would be that each advocate understands that he or she is part of this immense enterprise, which is not centrally directed. It is itself a complex system. Each participant should be imbued with a sense of common purpose of the mathematical world and mathematical thinking.
MP: What preliminary steps would you take?
Tondeur: We all have employment in a specific place. We act locally wherever we are positioned. I happened to be the director of mathematical research, so I did and continue to do it in my retirement through research advocacy. We all have roles to play. If you are a school principal, then you have to implement it in some way, mainly through recruiting the proper talent. I don’t see it as one first step; I see it as this group of people pursuing the multiplicity of agendas, cognizant of the fact that it’s part of a national purpose, or even a worldwide civilizational purpose.
MP: But you still have to develop that broader appreciation to achieve coordination.
Tondeur: You have to, and some people are very good at it. The Joint Policy Board for Mathematics has cultivated lots of people through the National Mathematics Awareness Month and its awards for outstanding communication. These are important contributions. It’s a big agenda, and you push it at every opportunity, and you have to awaken the sense of responsibility and also a sense of common purpose and progress in this enterprise. I’m impressed by the work of all these organizations and the dedication of their members. What is not there is the resonance of an orchestra. Take biology; nobody doubts that biology is big stuff. It changes our lives, prolongs life, and one big message is: it doesn’t happen without mathematics. You won’t have those drugs that make you live longer without math. Take cell phones: what is going on with telecommunications? Now the message is encryption. A research group proved in recent years that primality testing can be done in polynomial time. This result potentially puts our whole system of secure communication at risk because of that theorem of mathematics. That fact was established by three Indian mathematicians. Aren’t we number one in the world? Not necessarily. Great ideas show up anywhere. Collectively we haven’t succeeded in having the coordinated voices in place, so our Washington presentation of these agendas has not been able to make the case in a compelling fashion. The sound of the orchestra is still very faint.
MP: We do gather quite a few mathematics societies together often in this building (MAA headquarters), in an umbrella group called the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences (CBMS). There is, of course an executive officer. But I’m not sure that the role of the executive officer was ever created with the idea of being a conductor. A conductor has a lot of power. It would take a remarkably diplomatic executive officer to lead this orchestra of societies. But at least there is a structure that gives you a chance.
Tondeur: You have to use the platforms you have: CBMS may be a platform that can be used in an effective way. I think there are very few members of Congress who would recognize CBMS. They might associate it with a news channel or a pharmaceutical company.
MP: It’s much worse than that. I’m afraid the majority of mathematicians don’t know what CBMS is.
Tondeur: What is the challenge of public math advocacy? By way of analogy: How long did it take for reading to become recognized as an essential skill? Not too long ago, maybe 150 years ago, most people didn’t read; 100 years later, almost everybody was reading. Newspapers made it happen. All of a sudden the literacy level went up with the advent of newspapers. It is technology; you have news, and you print it and hand it out, and then reading becomes indispensable. We have to do this with mathematics. It is similarly becoming an indispensable part of everybody’s life.
(The interview continues in November 2007.)
A Wake-up Call for NSF
MP: What has happened since we last spoke in 2005?
Tondeur: Almost three years ago I summarized my concerns as expressed to you in 2005 in an opinion piece entitled “A Wake-up Call for NSF,” published in the June/July 2005 Notices of the AMS. This got many discussions going on these issues with opinion leaders in Washington and throughout the United States and practically identical issues with science and government representatives from several countries. This has led to continued travel all over the globe. Usually the discussion was framed in the larger context of the science and technology agenda for a specific nation or region. This has been an interesting experience about the political process, both here and abroad.
Let’s return to changes in the United States: a political storm was triggered by the National Academy of Sciences report titled “Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Future” (aka RAGS Report) written by a distinguished committee and brilliantly co-chaired by Norman P. Augustine and P. Roy Vagelos. This report was requested in a bipartisan fashion by Senators Lamar Alexander and Jeff Bingaman, drafted in ten weeks, and came out late November 2005. Its gist was adopted by the White House and Congress. It has led to dramatic changes in the budget outlook, in particular for the mathematical and physical sciences. All this was beginning to become budget reality for FY 2008 (which in the United States began in October 2007, but the Omnibus budget bill in December 2007 in fact threw out all these expectations). In the summer of 2007 Congress passed, and the President signed a three-year authorization bill on math and science with the wondrous title “The America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act”—or, “The America Competes Act” (a marvel of congressional acronym dexterity). While this is an authorization bill, the real money is in appropriations bills. Nevertheless, the outlook for federal support for these agendas over the next few years is improved, but as the saying goes, Congress has not only to talk the talk but walk the walk. The mathematics and statistics community has to seize these opportunities and turn them into a paradigm change for the role of the mathematical sciences in science and society.
Figure 16.9 Tondeur addressing the International Congress of Mathematicians, 2006, in Madrid.
International Consulting
MP: Could you expand a bit on your work with other countries? When we talked recently, you spoke about their different structures supporting science and operating procedures and how you approached those challenges.
Tondeur: Instead of expounding on general principles, let’s take a concrete example. During the last year, I have been involved with the issue of the interdisciplinarity of the mathematical sciences as practiced in Japan. Mathematical research in Japan is practiced at an extremely high level, yet it has been observed by many that the interactions of mathematics with the sciences and with industry are much weaker than in other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. A forthcoming OECD 2008 report spells this out explicitly, and I consulted with staffers preparing this report, in Germany, Japan, and the United States. I was asked to help on this issue with the development of specific proposals to change the situation.
I view these activities as a gardener looks at his opportunities and responsibilities. Through the accidents of my career, I have been thrust into a position where I am asked to attend and help in the nurturing of the garden of mathematics, one of mankind’s most glorious creations. How could I resist, having been given the incredible privilege to spend most of my life in this garden? It is a privilege and an honor to be asked, and I do my best to help promising projects succeed (mainly in the United States, Canada, Spain, and Japan, but also in other European countries and Australia). I have served on the Boards of Mathematical Sciences Institutes in the United States, Canada, Japan, and Spain.
Figure 16.10 Tondeur with Ari Paptev at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid, 2006.
“The Mathematical Sciences Are Humanity’s Heritage”
MP: Are there lessons to be learned from or issues in working with other countries?
Tondeur: Each country has its own (and sometimes no) science policy machinery. My work with other countries in support of the mathematical sciences has raised an eyebrow or two, especially among my friends from the field of national security. Here are my thoughts about this. The sketchy list of names like Thales, Euclid (origin of pure mathematics), Archimedes (embracing both pure mathematics and interdisciplinary fields), Galileo (promulgating mathematics as the language of nature), Newton, Leibniz, Euler, Laplace, Lagrange, Fermat, Galois, Gauss, Riemann, Poincaré, Cartan, Einstein, Hilbert, Weyl, von Neumann, Wiener, Chern, and an ever-larger number of contemporary luminaries says it all: the mathematical sciences are humanity’s heritage, and the development of it continues at a fantastic rate. The United States has been a stellar steward of this patrimony since fascism forced the emigration of leading scientists from Europe, and the U.S. generosity in providing them opportunities to flourish made the United States the leading supporter of this most brilliant of mankind’s achievements. Mathematics flourishes as a truly global intellectual enterprise with fantastic connectivity and universal standards, as demonstrated by the holding of periodic worldwide International Congresses of Mathematicians. I fervently hope that the United States will continue to be an exemplary steward of mathematics and science—together with other nations.
Figure 16.11 The Tondeurs having dinner in Sendai, Japan in 2005.
MP: Do you have any closing words?
Tondeur: In retirement, in the company of Claire, my cherished wife, we have deepened our knowledge of history and civilization through study and travel, getting an ever more profound sense of mankind’s evolutionary dynamics within “Big History.” We frequently are exhilarated by the beauty of nature’s evolution and man’s creations and are sometimes disheartened by man’s destructiveness and folly. It is a privilege to be able to live mainly for the letters and sciences, which continues to bring us into the company of some of mankind’s most gifted members (past and present). For me, having mathematics play a central and increasingly unifying role in the sciences is something that I am particularly grateful to have been able to devote heart and soul to it during an entire lifetime.
