Comments on: Courtney Coleman

By: Donald Remer

Donald Remer — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 04:33:49 +0000

Courtney was a wonderful colleague who I could always discuss ideas with and get his opinion on challenging topics we faced at the college. He was cheerful, friendly, kind, and a real gentleman. He always had nice things to say about fellow faculty. Students I talked to really liked his teaching style. He will be missed.

By: Betty Edwards Johnson

Betty Edwards Johnson — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 15:40:41 +0000

Professor Coleman was a wonderful teacher and mentor. I had him for what was then called Applied Analysis (Math 113/114), which was one of the more useful classes I had at Mudd. In that class, I was introduced to the power of math modeling, a skill I used throughout my career. In the following year, even though I was a Physics major, Prof. Coleman recruited me to be on the Chevron Math Clinic Team, where, through many hours at the board, he continued to provide excellent encouragement and mentoring. He had a way of meeting us “where we were” and bringing out the best of our abilities. A master of not only mathematics, but teaching.

By: Jonathan Mersel

Jonathan Mersel — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 02:15:23 +0000

I had the honor of working with Professor Coleman for two summers of mathematics research. His kind and insightful mentoring made those summers exceptional. I also had the pleasure of seeing the collaboration of Professor Coleman with Professor Borrelli which resulted in many thousands of pages of manuscripts and some wonderful books. He will always have a warm place in my heart.

By: Steve Itelson

Steve Itelson — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 17:18:46 +0000

Professor Coleman was my senior advisor. He encouraged me to distinguish between vocation and avocation. I neglected my senior year math classes, focused instead on teaching and keeping men out of the draft. He was superb at explaining differential equations and a pleasure to chat with about HMC and political activism.

By: Fredric Gey

Fredric Gey — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 06:37:28 +0000

I graduated in 1962 with a BS in Mathematics. I remember Courtney (we became on a first name basis at our class’s 25 reunion) as one of the clearest explainers of math that I ever had. I took an independent study in differential equations with him in my senior year, but I rarely used what I learned even as a scientific programmer. The mathematics genealogy project says he only had 1 PhD student, but while I received my PhD in 1993 in probabilistic search algorithms, I feel every bit a descendent of Courtney as I do of my own dissertation chair at Berkeley.

By: Libby Evans Medley

Libby Evans Medley — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 06:19:09 +0000

Dr. Coleman was one of my favorite professors. So pleased that he was able to continue teaching at HMC for a long period of time.

By: Jim Johnson

Jim Johnson — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 02:29:13 +0000

Perhaps my favorite professor at HMC. A dear person, great teacher and supportive mentor. Thanks Courtney.

By: Steven Spielman

Steven Spielman — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 02:10:02 +0000

He was a superb educator. He was particularly good at figuring out what explanation would work for an individual student. If I was stuck on a homework problem, office hours was guaranteed to set me straight. The joke among my classmates was that sometimes the revelation would occur before actually reaching his office. “I went to ask Coleman, but I figured it out in the hallway. How does he do that?”

By: Francis Su

Francis Su — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 22:03:46 +0000

One time I asked Court to sub for me in an advanced course I was teaching, and afterwards he gave me an impeccable set of notes on a topic I’d never covered before. I learned some cool stuff from those notes, and now that topic is one of my favorite things I like to cover in that course. That was Courtney–always generous, wise, kind, and a model teacher.

By: Darryl Yong

Darryl Yong — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 20:19:53 +0000

When I heard of Courtney Coleman’s passing, I spent an afternoon looking at old notes from classes that I took with him. What came back was a flood of memories of how kind and gentle he was, while still being so effective at helping me advance my own understanding and fixing my misconceptions.

One funny memory was a time when we were in class and he had run out of English letter variable names, so he started using Greek letter variables (such as ξ and ζ, which are tricky to write). And then when he ran out of those he started using Russian (such as Ш and Щ, which were even harder to write). Hilarious mayhem ensued…

I am so grateful for his presence in the mathematics department while I was a student. I spent any hours in the office that he shared with Bob Borrelli and I feel his loss deeply.