Janet L. Beery
Professor of Mathematics
Curriculum Vitae

Email Janet Beery

Many people who have never had occasion to learn what mathematics is confuse it with arithmetic and consider it a dry and arid science. In actual fact it is the science which demands the utmost imagination. One of the foremost mathematicians of our century says very justly that it is impossible to be a mathematician without also being a poet in spirit. . . . It seems to me that the poet must see what others do not see, must see more deeply than other people. And the mathematician must do the same.

- Sofya Kovalevskaya, 1890

Curriculum development:
    Dr. Beery has been working on implementing computer use and interactive learning in Calculus I and II and Linear Algebra. She has given talks at national mathematics meetings on innovations in calculus and linear algebra courses, coordinated workshops on calculus reform, and obtained an NSF-ILI grant to set up two computer classrooms in Hentschke Hall and, later, Appleton Hall.


Courses:
    Dr. Beery has introduced an activity-based elementary mathematics history course, MATH 115, Mathematics through Its History.   She also has introduced sophomore-level courses in Graph Theory and in Discrete Mathematical Structures. In addition to the courses already listed, she teaches Finite Mathematics, History of Mathematics, Number Theory, Probability Theory, Abstract Algebra, Real Analysis, Point Set Topology, and Senior Research Seminar, and directs independent studies in related fields.


Research interests:
    Dr. Beery's research specialty is finite permutation group theory, approached via representation and character theory and via combinatorial methods. More recently, she has been interested in the history of mathematics.  She is editor of the MAA online journal, Convergence, about the history of mathematics and its use in teaching.

    Figures (used in online article: Sums of Powers of Positive Integers)


Mathematics Department Page