Biographical Information - Bruce Ikenaga

The 2008--2009 academic year will be my 15th year at MU. Before coming to MU, I spent twelve years in the Department of Mathematics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

I was born in Boston, Massachusetts, but I grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii. I graduated from Punahou School in 1972.

(Punahou's football team won the state championship last fall, and one of the linebackers won the high school Butkus Award! Sports Illustrated ranked Puanhou's sports program number one in the country last year, too. Also, some kid from our high school got elected President in November.)

I majored in math at M.I.T. and graduated with a B.S. in Math in 1976. I did my graduate work at Cornell and received a doctorate in math in 1982. My thesis advisor was Kenneth S. Brown.

My professional areas of interest are group cohomology and homological algebra, group theory, and topology. They're a lot of fun, though most of their practical benefits are in other areas of math (rather than Real Life). In this respect, they are like (some) art, or music, or literature.

I spend most of my time teaching; I did not become a mathematician in order to teach, but I found out as I did it that I liked it, and that it was very rewarding.

Things I enjoy besides doing and teaching math:

• Working with computers I use TeX, perl, and some (Emacs) lisp to do my work. My programs are pretty ugly, but they usually do what I want.
• Strength training and running I stopped doing power lifting after college because it was too hard on my joints. Now I do dumbbell work (spare me the obvious jokes) and stuff with my old Soloflex (which still works great after 20 years!). I try to run 4 miles a couple of times a week. It would be nice if students who see me running would not make jokes about sundials, molasses, and drying paint.
• Reading Unfortunately, I'll read nearly anything. At the moment, I've got bookmarks in a couple of dozen books.
• Gardening I put in a small vegetable garden last year; I'm expanding it this year. I'm working on replacing a lot of the turf in my yard with plantings. I don't really know what I'm doing, but I work hard at it!

Send comments about this page to: bikenaga@marauder.millersville.edu.

Last updated: March 21, 2009

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