Henry W Gould

Early life and education

Prof. Gould was born in Portsmouth, Virginia. Between 1945 and 1947, he attended National Radio Institute in Washington D.C.. In 1946, he graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Portsmouth, Virginia. In 1946–1948 he studied at Old Dominion University and started school at University of Virginia. He worked at WUVA radio 1948–1957. In 1951 to 1952, he studied communications theory at The Southeastern Signal School (TSESS), Fort Gordon, Georgia. In 1954, he graduated from University of Virginia, where he received his B.A. in Mathematics and M.A. Mathematics in 1956. In 1957, He attended University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1957–1958, where he served as Research Assistant to Professor Alfred Brauer. In 1958, he moved to Morgantown, West Virginia.

Academic career

Professor Gould has published over 200 papers, which have appeared in about 20 countries. His research has been in combinatorial analysis, number theory, special functions of mathematical physics, and the history of mathematics and astronomy. Gould served as mathematics consultant to the 'Dear Abby' newspaper column. One interesting aspect of this work was writing an explanation of the three ancient Greek problems (trisecting an angle, squaring the circle, and duplicating the cube). A pamphlet on this material was sent to hundreds of readers (mostly secondary school students) in every state and overseas, who wanted to know more about these famous problems.

In 1957, some of his early work from 1956 was used by Oakley and Wisner to enumerate hexaflexagons.

In the same year, Gould was elected as a full member of the Sigma Xi Research Society for his distinction in mathematics at the University of Virginia, and the Beta Chapter of the national mathematics honorary Pi Mu Epsilon at the University of North Carolina.

In 1958, he joined the faculty of West Virginia University as an instructor, and received the rank of Professor in 1969.

From 1960 to 2007, he was in charge of the development of a Departmental Mathematics Research Library at West Virginia University. The library had only some 89 journals in 1958, but was expanded to reach as many as 250 titles by 1978. Since then money was short and subscriptions were lost. The Departmental Library was discontinued in June 2008 and its holdings moved into Wise Library and older materials into a Depository storage facility. The former library space is now used to house an undergraduate calculus tutorial center with more than a hundred computers.

From 1961 to 1971, Gould founded and circulated a mathematical serial Mathematica Monongaliae, of which 12 issues were published. Several of these have been reprinted extensively, such as issue No. 12, a "Bibliography of Bell and Catalan Numbers". This annotated bibliography was cited in two separate articles by Martin Gardner in his mathematical column in the Scientific American magazine. Issue No. 10, a "Chronological Bibliography of the Cauchy Integral Theorem" listing 200 proofs of the famous theorem was coauthored with Herbert K. Fallin. The bibliography was cited in the journal Historia Mathematica. With the aid of graduate student Timothy Glatzer of West Virginia University, the Bell and Catalan number bibliography has been revised and re-alphabetized and it is available online.

In 1962, Gould was one of the founding editors of the number theory journal Fibonacci Quarterly and for many years has been an associate editor of the Journal of Mathematical Research and Exposition founded by L. C. Hsu and published at Dalian, People's Republic of China.

In 1963, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In 1965, Professors Hsu and Gould began a research collaboration. Gould is also an associate editor of the on-line electronic Journal of Integer Sequences, and is a member of the editorial board of the journal Applicable Analysis and Discrete Mathematics published by the University of Belgrade, Serbia.

In 1967, he became one of the charter members of the Alpha Chapter of Pi Mu Epsilon mathematics honorary at West Virginia University.

In 1974, he was an invited lecturer at the National Science Foundation Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences Regional Conference on Special Functions at V.P.I.

In 1976 he was invited to organize a Special Session on Combinatorial Identities for the American Mathematical Society at its Summer Meeting in Toronto, Canada.

Between 1967 and 1970, he was a Visiting Lecturer for the Mathematical Association of America.

He has been a consultant with the National Security Agency, Principal Investigator at West Virginia University with several College of Arts and Sciences grants, and grants from the National Science Foundation on the topic of Combinatorial Identities, and has served as a reviewer for the Mathematical Reviews and the Zentralblatt für Mathematik.

Between 1974 and 1976, he was a Visiting Lecturer for the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

From 1974 to 1979, Professor Gould was Editor-in-Chief of the Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Science.

In 1976, he was an invited participant to the first Annual Symposium on the History of Mathematics held at the National Museum of Science and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., concerned with Cauchy's contributions to analysis. Gould has published extensive bibliographies on combinatorial topics and on Cauchy's integral theorem.

Between 1976 and 1977, he directed a Research Program at West Virginia University under auspices of the Office of the Provost, concerned with mathematical computations for coal mine valuation, using Bondurant's variation of the Hoskold actuarial formula.

In 1990, Professor Gould was elected a Foundation Fellow of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications.

In 1998, a letter of commendation was presented to him from U. S. Senator Robert C. Byrd, acknowledging and praising Gould's long-time service to West Virginia University.

In 1999, Volume 204 of the journal Discrete Mathematics was dedicated in honor of Gould and his work and contained numerous invited papers in his honor. The volume was edited by Ira M. Gessel, Louis W. Shapiro and Douglas Rogers. It contained an amusing biographical preface by the editors.

In 2006, an article entitled "An Interview with H. W. Gould", by Prof. Scott H. Brown, appears in the College Mathematics Journal.

In Spring 2007, he became Professor Emeritus, after 49 years of service at West Virginia University.

On 20 Sept. 2007, a mathematics colloquium was held in Gould's honor, at which time George Andrews, Evan Pugh Professor in the Department of Mathematics at The Pennsylvania State University and President-Elect of the American Mathematical Society, presented a paper "Gould’s Function and Problems in Partitions," as part of the WVU Distinguished Lecture Series in Mathematics in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. Andrews' paper was motivated by Gould's 1964 paper on compositions into relatively prime parts. Also at this celebration Dot Underwood, Assistant to West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, III, presented a special certificate to Gould, signed by the Governor, making Gould an "Honorary Mountaineer" in recognition of his 49 years of outstanding service to West Virginia University and for his dedication to research and education in the field of mathematics.

On 10 March 2010, Gould was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications at the 19th Annual General Meeting of the Institute at Florida Atlantic University.

As Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, Gould continues his research and service at West Virginia University. On the occasion of his retirement another special framed letter of commendation was presented to him from U. S. Senator Robert C. Byrd, and a similar letter from U. S. Senator Jay Rockefeller, acknowledging and praising Gould's long service to West Virginia University.

Among his activities in the 2000s, Gould began a research collaboration with Dr. Jocelyn Quaintance, Visiting Research Assistant Professor of Mathematics at West Virginia University in 2006–2010. They worked on a long-term revision of Gould's 1972 book "Combinatorial Identities", and Gould's handwritten manuscript notes covering 1945–1990.

Membership

Awards

In 1977, he received the J. Shelton Horsley Research Award from the Virginia Academy of Science.

In March 1988, Gould received the Benedum Distinguished Scholar Award for Physical Sciences and Technology at West Virginia University.

Discovery

Star of David theorem (1972) – a mathematical result on arithmetic properties of binomial coefficients.

Personal life

Henry Gould is married to Jean West Gould and together they live in Morgantown, West Virginia. They have two daughters. Jean has four academic degrees herself, especially in Florentine art history and a fine arts degree in sculpture, and she has studied therapeutic horsemanship.

Gould's late first wife Josephine Angotti Gould (1932–1994) owned a pet shop and was active with art and published articles about birds and tropical fish. They raised orchids and founded and ran a local orchid society for 15 years.

Gould helped establish the Morgantown Astronomy Club in 1965 and was its president for ten years.

He was instrumental in establishing the West Virginia University Amateur Radio Club in 1958. He has been a licensed amateur radio operator (call sign K4CQA) since 1955, and has contacted thousands of fellow 'hams' in 100 countries using Morse code telegraphy. Also since 1955 he has been a licensed commercial broadcast radio operator, and worked in broadcast radio as announcer and engineer.

Chester Gould, the creator of comic strip character Dick Tracy, is a distant cousin of Henry W. Gould.