Background

  • Hello. My name is Professor Neil White, and I have been a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics at UF since 1973. I have now retired and am an Emeritus Professor. I earned my B.S. (with a major in math and a minor in chemistry) at Michigan State U. in 1966, and my Ph. D. in math at Harvard in 1972. I was an instructor at Yale for two years before coming to UF. Since coming to UF I have several sabbaticals at the University of North Carolina, Ohio State, the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications at the University of Minnesota, the Center for Communications Research in Princeton, N.J., and UMIST in Manchester, England. I was the Associate Chair of the Mathematics Department from 1998 to 2000.

    Teaching

    I usually taught calculus and/or upper division and graduate classes in combinatorics, algebra, and linear algebra.

    Books

  • I am an editor of three books and coauthor of one more on matroid theory, published with Cambridge University Press in the Encyclopedia of Mathematics series. These books are Theory of Matroids, Combinatorial Geometries, Matroid Applications, and Oriented Matroids.
  • I am also coauthor of another book, Coxeter Matroids, with A. Borovik and I. M. Gelfand, published by Birkhauser.

    Research Interests

  • Coxeter matroids, which are certain combinatorial structures based on Coxeter groups, which are groups of isometries generated by reflections in ordinary Euclidean n-space.
  • Recovery of geometric meaning of certain algebraic expressions which are invariants of the projective group. This has potential application in computer vision, automated geometry theorem-proving, and other areas of computer geometry.
  • Various other areas which combine combinatorics, algebra, and geometry, such as matroid theory, structural rigidity, and Groebner bases.

    Personal

  • My wife, Mary, and I are happily married since 1967. We have two sons. Jeff is 35, married to Tracy, and living in Cumming, GA, and they have two daughters, Zoe 2 and McKenna (newborn). Brian, who is 30, has a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Boston College, and has completed a post-doc at Harvard. He has recently taken a job at Infinity Pharmaceutical Co. in Cambridge, MA. His wife, Priscilla, works at the same company, and they are living in Malden, MA.
  • My hobbies include reading, bridge, simulation baseball, working out, astronomy, watching Gator Sports, and philately. Since my retirement, I have become a volunteer for Guardian ad Litem (advocating for children involved in abuse/neglect cases) and for the Florida Museum of Natural History. I am also active in United Faculty of Florida, the faculty union, as treasurer of the UF branch and also serving on the grievance committee.

    Other links of interest

    Jeopardy trivia game. I often gave my classes trivia questions, taking advantage of my physical resemblence to Alex Trebeck (that is, until he shaved off his mustache).

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  • Last updated July. 11, 2008.