If you want
to see students perform under stress, math exams are OK,
says Professor of Mathematics Ted Bick '58.
But if you really want to see students
perform under stress, watch them run a grueling cross
country race.
“In cross country, you get to know
the students in a different way than you do in the
classroom,” he says. “You see them when they're
hurting and under stress, and you really find out a lot
about their character.”
Bick, an avid runner, retires this year
after thirty-two years in the Mathematics Department.
Contrary to rumors, he has never required his students to
run. But being a runner probably never hurt, either.
Affable and witty, Bick has held forth for years with
math majors and runners alike on topics ranging from
differential equations to the Boston Marathon.
Running and math go together, he says,
because both are solitary pursuits. “I can't tell
you how many times I've been on a run and thought I'd
proved a theorem. Most of the time, I either forgot the
proof or found out it was wrong. In mathematics, you've
got a problem and you solve it alone. Even when you
collaborate with a colleague, you are solving problems in
solitude.
“I've loved running,” he
continues. “It's been an important part of my life.
Even after knee surgery a few years ago, I still run
three or four times a week. My competitive career is
over. But as they say, 'once a marine, always a marine.'
The same is true with runners.”
In 1972, the year that Frank Shorter's
Olympic win in the marathon ignited the running boom,
Union's athletic director saw Bick's talent and asked him
to coach the cross country team. He held that post until
1982 and came out of coaching retirement to mentor the
1993 team.
Bick's own personal records would be
the envy of runners of any age. In his early 40s, he ran
2:46 in the Boston Marathon. Years later, as a member of
the over-50 division, he repeated that time in the
Berkshire Marathon.
Bick entered Union after a stint with
the Marines, graduating in 1958 with a degree in
mathematics. After earning his Ph.D. at the University of
Rochester, he taught at Hobart and William Smith Colleges
until 1966, when he returned to his alma mater.
As a mathematician, he specializes in
analysis. He has written books on set theory and partial
differential equations and, for a number of years, taught
a course on mathematical biology.
One of his first faculty assignments,
taken a year after he arrived, was as a member of a
committee that was to study the future of the College.
Bick and another new faculty member were asked to come up
with “really outrageous ideas,” one of which
was that Union should admit women. “They all thought
that was very amusing, and three years later that became
a reality.”
Bick took particular satisfaction in
the fact that Patty Sipe, who arrived in 1970 with
Union's first women, got perfect scores in every one of
his calculus exams, a feat not done before or since, he
says.
Bick is proud of his association with
students in the Academic Opportunity Program, for
students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. He was
the program's first director in the late 1960s and has
taught the summer math component nearly every year.
“It's been a source of great pride to see them
succeed.”
Bick loves sports of all kinds and is a
regular at noontime faculty basketball games on the days
he doesn't run. At home football games, he usually sits
with a number of fellow alumni, playing his trumpet.
“I started sitting with alumni who liked to sing the
fight song after touchdowns. But we sang so off-key that
I decided to play the trumpet instead. After a short
time, I was joined by Ed Craig (former dean of
engineering). As bad as we are, each of us thinks he's
better than the other.” Bick has just purchased a
new trumpet, part of a rite of passage to what he calls
“my second childhood, but with no adult
supervision.”
With his children spread across the
country, Bick and his wife, Joan, plan to indulge their
love for travel. He also pledges to be among the
spectators at football games and cross country meets. And
he plans to continue work on a book with colleague
Michael Frame. “Retirement is the next to last thing
you do. I hope that before I do the last thing I do, I'll
finish that book.”