On May 8, community members honored the retiring Prof. Ira Gessel (MATH) with a conference and dinner, according to a May 14 BrandeisNOW article. 

Gessel earned a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977, and joined the Brandeis faculty in 1984. 

In his nearly 31 years at the University, Gessel has taught a wide range of mathematics courses—from MATH 23b, “Introduction to Proofs,” to MATH 180a, “Combinatorics.”

During the conference, Prof. Daniel Ruberman (MATH)—the chair of the mathematics department—praised Gessel as both a model professor and a model citizen, according to the BrandeisNOW article.

 “It’s hard to imagine the department without Ira,” Ruberman said. “Not only is Ira a great mathematician but he’s also been a great citizen of the department. He is always willing to sit down with students and colleagues. Every time I walked by his office, there was also someone in there with him.”

Several students also stepped up to praise Gessel, with many noting his “way of gently correcting or pushing his students toward the right answer,” according to the article.

“Ira was an incredibly patient teacher,” said Matthew Moynihan, Ph.D. ’12. “He would give me a problem to solve and suggest a few ways to solve it. Then, I would work on it for a month, finally figure it out and realize that Ira had suggested the right solution weeks ago but he wanted me to figure it out on my own.”

Additionally, the mathematics department presented Gessel with a framed genealogy poster of Gessel’s mathematical decedents, or students.

Speakers for the conference—which celebrated Gessel’s career and mathematic innovation— included Andrew Gainer-Dewar, a mathematics professor from Hobart and William Smith College; Kyle Petersen, a mathematics professor from DePaul University; Richard Stanley, a mathematics professor at MIT; Dennis Stanton, a mathematics professor at the University of Minnesota; and Guoce Xin, a mathematics professor at Capital Normal University.