Posted on May 27, 2003

Doing it right

In less than a year and a half, the College will enter an
era that, I believe, can be one of the most
significant in its history-the era of the House System.

As construction proceeds, and as a committee of faculty, students, and staff works to solidify the many details of this important initiative, I want to describe why, in my opinion, the House System represents the most important academic initiative we have undertaken in decades.

It is true that what will be most readily apparent with the House System is a change in the residential and social nature of the College. In addition to residence halls, and theme houses, and fraternities and sororities, we will have a new residential component that will complement the existing facets of what Union offers.

While incoming students will still be assigned rooms in residence halls, they will also be made-randomly-members of one of the seven houses in the new House System. Each house will provide its members with an intimate social setting, and the physical space will offer opportunities for interaction with other students, faculty, and staff. By serving as everything from a focus for social activities to a vehicle for community service to the setting for a small concert, each house will give students a new outlet.

The houses will go beyond being merely
an outlet, however. Since all of our faculty members will have a house affiliation, and since faculty will work with house members to plan and organize educational and
cultural events, the houses will become a major academic force.

Study after study has shown, and your experiences I am sure confirm, that a student's contact with faculty outside the classroom is one of the most important aspects of a college education. The House System builds on those experiences.

By bringing faculty to student houses, the House System will enable students to have more and better contact with faculty. Through formal classes (seminar rooms are built into the houses) and informal conversations, the intellectual life of the campus will be enhanced.

As you think back to the teachers you had, you will acknowledge that they are among the most influential people in your college life-and, in many cases, in your entire life. Sure, a few may have irritated you; some may not have furthered your curiosity in a particular subject. However, I would bet that many of them were sources of stimulus and inspiration. I would guess that, for some of you, one teacher's friendly interest in you may well have changed your whole attitude toward college and learning.

Recently, the faculty-student-staff committee reviewed our plan with Bowdoin and Middlebury, which have undertaken similar efforts (in fact, we “stole” the idea from Bowdoin). What the committee found, though, was that several of their counterparts at Bowdoin and Middlebury said that we were “doing it right.”

By “doing it right,” they meant that, unlike Bowdoin and Middlebury, which eliminated fraternities and created a new system, we were adding to what we had. At Union, fraternities will continue to play a major role on the campus stage. But socially
-and academically-students will have
an added option. In the final analysis, Union will be a model for those who want to provide a range of residential and social options and enrich intellectual life outside the classroom.

Roger H. Hull

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Posted on May 27, 2003

How to explain the appeal of a good mystery story?

To Dean of the Faculty Christie Sorum, “They're for the most part morality tales, with a nice closed system: Somebody does something bad and they're caught, which is reassuring, since most literature and the world around us are not so simple, and good and bad are not so clear. You know the program, so you can relax.”

Mysteries are amazingly popular on college campuses. Sorum, in fact, says she's never been on a campus where this kind of book wasn't big. Even at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, where she studied and visited when she's led terms abroad, “there's a whole wall filled with mysteries.”

It's no different at Union. One of the popular browsing spots on campus is in the
Science and Engineering Center, near the office of Kimmo Rosenthal, dean for undergraduate education. A small bookcase has become a “lending library,” where faculty, students and staff bring in mysteries and borrow others.

Sorum, who “learned French reading Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret books,” also learned German through translations of Agatha Christie novels that she'd already read in English.

“My favorite genre is the nonviolent, proper, British society mystery. I don't like Erle Stanley Gardner, or any of those American male detectives who drink and womanize and use bad language.”

Asked about her reading habits, Sorum confesses to beginning her reading with the first chapter and then the last three or four pages. “My husband, my daughter, and her significant other-an author-are aghast-I'm defeating the author's purpose, they tell me. But I find it more interesting how you get to that ending-something to think about when I'm reading-a different kind of suspense.”

Of her long list of recommended mystery novels (see “Christie Sorum recommends”), a great percentage are by women authors. “Interesting,” she says, “especially since that's not true of most of the world's literature.”

An entire course of mysteries

The earliest mystery stories?

“You could actually start with Cain and Abel, or with Oedipus Rex,” says Judith Lewin of the English Department faculty. But in her course about “Victorian Detective Fiction,” she begins with Edgar Allen Poe, who's considered the pioneer of the form.

“Poe created the first private detective in literary fiction-C. Auguste Dupin,” she notes. “You can trace the lineage of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Miss Marple back to Dupin.”

In fact, adds Alina Samuels '03, a student in Lewin's class, “in one of Conan Doyle's stories, Sherlock Holmes actually compares himself to Dupin.”

Students in the class are also reading prominent Victorian writers Charles Dickens (Bleak House) and Wilkie Collins (The Moonstone). The course “investigates detective fiction's emergence and popularity in late nineteenth-century English literature and places the birth of the genre in its social and cultural context…as it intersects with historical conditions of Empire, gender relations, and social policy,” as the course description reads.

Books like these can launch readers on their own detective hunt, unearthing cultural
attitudes, assumptions, and practices of the time. Lewin's students searched for clues in Schaffer Library's Special Collections, examining Dickens's
Bleak House as it originally appeared in monthly “magazine” parts. They looked at the advertisements for clothing, medicine, and literature that appeared alongside each installment along with the story illustrations to see which scenes were highlighted. Samuels and her group studied ads “because we thought they'd say something about the average reader back then and about society.
I looked at medicine and hygiene ads crammed on the pages. Unlike today, when we tend to have at least one product for each ailment, I found ads for a pill that supposedly cured everything from the common cough to cholera.”

Lewin is delighted that the library owns this complete, serial, first edition of
Bleak House from Household Words, as well as both the British and American serial editions of Collins's The Moonstone. “This is a wonderfully rare opportunity. Students are excited about putting on white gloves and sleuthing in the archives. And they're experiencing firsthand how the cliffhanger works.”

In the opening and closing scenes of Conan Doyle's Sign of Four, Holmes reaches for a syringe of cocaine. Says Samuels, “To me, this was pretty surprising-this character, this detective-hero I associated with young boys' reading-finding out he was a drug addict! Watson expressed his disapproval, but Holmes just saw it as a personal foible of his, something to fill his brilliant mind when he wasn't hot on the trail of solving a mystery.”

Puns and allusions

On her December vacation, Judith Lewin of the English Department took with her a contemporary literary mystery called
The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez Réverte-“he uses puns and allusions that are rewarding if you know French literature. I also found
The Seville Communion, where the sleuthing involves the Vatican. Perez-Réverte is someone I stumbled across not in the detective fiction section but among the trade paperbacks.”

Each of his books deals with a different topic, she says, having dug up The Nautical Chart, “about Jesuits and sailing and mapping in Spain, dealing with archives and the relationship between present and historical times.” And there are more: “The Flanders Panel , an art history thriller, connects two of my interests
-historical fictions and detective thrillers-in a book about a painting called 'The Game of Chess.'”

The longer, the better

Kimmo Rosenthal, dean for undergraduate education and professor of mathematics, is another big mystery fan.

“I highly recommend Elizabeth George's latest, A Traitor to Memory, the eleventh book in the series, all with the same two protagonists. These are British mysteries, although the writer is American. I think she's as good as P.D. James. The new book is 1,000 pages long-very intricately plotted, well written, literary, in-depth character development, a half-dozen intertwining stories. I find it harder to get into a 250-page mystery
-they aren't complicated or interesting enough.”

Rosenthal enjoys historical mysteries too, such as The Instance of the Fingerpost, by Iain Pears. This is another 1,000-page book “relating the same crime from the perspective of four different protagonists
-two fictional, two real historic figures, including a real-life mathematician and one of the first cryptographers. There's even an account of the first blood transfusion. Great ending that I would never have figured out. Not a quick or easy read, but a lot of fun.”

Otherwise, he reads about the mysteries of music, “since I picked up the saxophone at the age of forty-two. In fact, playing the sax interferes with my reading!” Rosenthal cites
Lush Life, by David Hajdu, a biography of Billy Strayhorn, “the greatest American composer no one has ever heard of. He spent most of his life watching someone else garner praise for his work.”

You can't run out

Peter Blankman, director of communications and publications, is a great source of information on mystery and detective fiction for the uninitiated and the well-read alike.

“For someone not yet immersed in mysteries, digging in can be daunting,” he says. “Happily, there's lots of help. One of my favorites is a 100-best list compiled by the British author and critic H.R.F. Keating. It's a few years old but still serves as a good introduction. Keating discusses books that essentially span the history of modern mystery writing and that represent different genres. A more recent list was compiled by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. And just a click away is a mass of information on the web.”

If you like to collect, lists like these are perfect. Blankman has been tracking down books from Keating's list for years, and loves the elation and excitement of finding a missing title in a used bookstore.

A plus to the joy of mystery reading, says Blankman: “It's a rare mystery writer who hasn't created a series. So when you find authors and characters that you like, odds are that there are more. So you'll never run out.”

A mini lending library

Judy Manchester, senior director of financial services, points to her own unofficial “lending library,” a small
space atop a filing cabinet opposite her desk, where
colleagues drop off and pick up the latest selections.

Manchester tends to like books with a continuing character, “like Alex Cross, the forensic psychologist in James Patterson's mystery novels. One of his books, Kiss the Girls, was made into a movie, with Morgan Freeman playing Alex Cross-the best casting job I've ever seen!”

She also recommends David Baldacci's Wish You Well
(“I picked it up because I've enjoyed his books. This one turned out not to be a mystery but was based on his childhood in the West Virginia mountains. I loved it.”) and Philip Margolin: “He's good at shocking you at the end, and you're hooked from page one.”

Her all-time favorite mystery writer is Robert Ludlum, who “has the ability to do intricate plots, multiple characters, and leave no loose ends. Great spy novels. Such an intricate web he weaves. Can't put it down. The kind of book you're up at 3 a.m., turning pages.”

A heavy alternative

If mystery novels are not quite your cup of tea, here's an alternative recommendation from Bill Thomas, professor of French and director of international programs: “There's always Proust! Everybody should read
Remembrance of Things Past.”

Why, beyond the fact that it's a great piece of literature?

“Well, it has several advantages, the first being that it's 3,000 pages long,” Thomas says. “So you'll only have to answer once the question of what to bring on your summer vacation. And you never
finish Proust. Once you start, you can go cocktail parties or dinners or whatever, and drop into the conversation that your goal is to finish Proust. This puts you into the intellectual elite/snob category. What they never have to know is where you are in the book. You may still be on page 54, but they're not going to know that!”

Proust is actually a profound mystery, since you don't know until the very end of the 3,000 pages how things will work out. “And,” says Thomas, “any work of fiction, when you think about it, is a mystery.”

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Posted on May 27, 2003

If you are new to mysteries, there are lots of suggestions about where to start. A list compiled by the distinguished British author and critic H.R.F. Keating is a few years old but still serves as a good introduction:

Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Edgar Allan Poe (1845)

The Moonstone,
Wilkie Collins (1868)

The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens (1870)

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle (1892)

The Amateur Cracksman,
E.W. Hornung (1899)

The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)

The Thinking Machine,
Jacques Futrelle (1907)

The Circular Staircase,
Mary Roberts Rinehart (1908)

The Innocence of Father Brown, G.K. Chesterton (1911)

Uncle Abner,
Melville Davisson Post (1918)

The Mind of Mr. J. G. Reeder, Edgar Wallace (1925)

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie (1926)

Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett (1929)

Death of My Aunt, C.H.B. Kitchin (1929)

The Documents in the Case, Dorothy L. Sayers (1930)

The Maltese Falcon,
Dashiell Hammett (1930)

The Sands of Windee,
Arthur Upfield (1931)

Before the Fact,
Francis Iles (1932)

The Case of the Sulky Girl, Erle Stanley Gardner (1933)

Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie (1934)

The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain (1934)

The Nine Tailors,
Dorothy L. Sayers (1934)

The Hollow Man,
John Dickson Carr (1935)

The League of Frightened Men, Rex Stout (1935)

The Wheel Spins,
Ethel Una White (1936)

The Beast Must Die,
Nicholas Blake (1938)

The Bride Wore Black,
Cornell Woolrich (1940)

Surfeit of Lampreys, Ngaio March (1940)

Calamity Town,
Ellery Queen (1942)

Tragedy at Law,
Cyril Hare (1942)

The High Window,
Raymond Chandler (1942)

Green for Danger,
Christina Brand (1944)

Appleby's End,
Michael Innes (1945)

Murder Among Friends,
Elizabeth Ferrars (1946)

The Horizontal Man,
Helen Eustis (1946)

The Moving Toyshop,
Edmund Crispin (1946)

The Fabulous Clipjoint,
Frederic Brown (1947)

The Franchise Affair,
Josephine Tey (1948)

Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly, John Franklin Bardin (1948)

More Work for the Undertaker, Margery Allingham (1948)

My Friend Maigret,
Georges Simenon (1949)

The Asphalt Jungle,
W.R. Burnett (1949)

Smallbone Deceased,
Michael Gilbert (1950)

The Stain on the Snow,
Georges Simenon (1950)

The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey (1951)

Last Seen Wearing..., HillaryWaugh (1952)

The Tiger in the Smoke,
Margery Allingham (1952)

Five Roundabouts to Heaven, John Bingham (1953)

The Long Goodbye,
Raymond Chandler (1953)

Post Mortem,
Guy Gullingford (1953)

The Party at No. 5,
Shelley Smith (1954)

The Talented Mr. Ripley,
Patricia Highsmith (1955)

Beast in View,
Margaret Millar (1955)

Gideon's Week,
John Creasey (1956)

Mystery Stories,
Stanley Ellin (1956)

Maigret in Court,
Georges Simenon (1960)

The New Sonia Wayward, Michael Innes (1960)

Gun Before Butter,
Nicolas Freeling (1963; also known as Question of Loyalty)

The Expendable Man,
Dorothy B. Hughes (1963)

Pop. 1280,
Jim Thompson (1964)

R.S.V.P. Murder, M.G. Eberhart (1965)

The Man Who Killed Himself, Julian Symons (1967)

Murder Against the Grain, Emma Lathen (1967)

Roseanne, Maj Sjowall &
Per Wahloo (1967)

The Last Best Friend,
George Sims (1967)

The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest, Peter Dickinson (1968)

Mr. Splitfoot,
Helen McCloy (1968)

The Private Wound,
Nicholas Blake (1968)

The Tremor of Forgery,
Patricia Highsmith (1969)

Blind Man With a Pistol,
Chester Himes (1969)

Young Man, I Think You're Dying, Joan Fleming (1970)

Beyond This Point Are Monsters, Margaret Millar (1970)

Sadie When She Died,
Ed McBain (1972)

The Friends of Eddie Coyle, George V. Higgins (1972)

The Players and the Game, Julian Symons (1972)

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall,
Stanley Ellin (1972)

The Dance Hall of the Dead, Tony Hillerman (1973)

The Poison Oracle,
Peter Dickinson (1974)

Fletch,
Gregory McDonald (1974)

The Black Tower, P.D. James (1975)

The Long Shadow,
Celia Fremlin (1975)

The Naked Nuns,
Colin Watson (1975)

The Blue Hammer,
Ross MacDonald (1976)

Sleeping Murder, Agatha Christie (1976)

A Death in the Life,
Dorothy Salisbury Davis (1976)

The Investigation,
Dorothy Uhnak (1976)

A Judgement in Stone,
Ruth Rendell (1977)

Laidlaw,
William Mcllvanney (1977)

Nobody's Perfect,
Donald Westlake (1977)

A Pinch of Snuff,
Reginald Hill (1978)

Skinflick,
Joseph Hansen (1979)

Kill Claudio,
P.M. Hubbard (1979)

The Green Ripper,
John D. McDonald (1979)

All On a Summer's Day,
John Wainwright (1979)

Death in a Tenured Position, Amanda Cross (1981)

The Glitter Dome,
Joseph Wambaugh (1981)

To Make a Killing,
June Thomson (1982; also known as A Portrait of Lilith)

The False Inspector Dew,
Peter Lovesey (1982)

The Artful Egg,
James McClure (1984)

A Taste for Death, P.D. James (1986)

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Posted on May 27, 2003

A more recent list of favorites comes from the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association:

The Tiger in the Smoke,
Marjorie Allingham

A Coffin for Dimitrios,
Eric Ambler

A Dram of Poison,
Charlotte Armstrong

Aunt Dimity's Death,
Nancy Atherton

In the Heat of the Night,
John Ball

Death by Sheer Torture,
Robert Barnard

Track of the Cat,
Nevada Barr

The Beast Must Die,
Nicholas Blake

When the Sacred
Ginmill Closes,
Lawrence Block

Green for Danger,
Christina Brand

The Fabulous Clipjoint,
Frederic Brown

The 39 Steps,
John Buchan

Black Cherry Blues, James Lee Burke

The Postman Always Rings Twice, James Cain

The Thin Woman,
Dorothy Cannell

The Three Coffins,
John Dickson Carr

Thus Was Adonis Murdered, Sarah Caudwell

The Big Sleep,
Raymond Chandler

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie

The Concrete Blonde,
Michael Connelly

The Man Who Liked
Slow Tomatoes, K.C. Constantine

The Monkey's Raincoat,
Robert Crais

The Moving Toyshop,
Edmund Crispin

Dreaming of the Bones,
Deborah Crombie

The Last Good Kiss,
James Crumley

The Yellow Room Conspiracy, Peter Dickinson

The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle

Rebecca,
Daphne DuMaurier

Booked to Die,
John Dunning

Old Bones,
Aaron Elkins

One for the Money,
Janet Evanovich

Time and Again,
Jack Finney

Who in Hell is Wanda Fuca?, G.M. Ford

Whip Hand,
Dick Francis

The Hours Before Dawn,
Celia Fremlin

A Great Deliverance,
Elizabeth George

Smallbone Deceased,
Michael Gilbert

“A” is for Alibi,
Sue Grafton

The Killings at Badger's Drift, Caroline Graham

The Man With the
Load of Mischief,
Martha Grimes

The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett

An English Murder,
Cyril Hare

The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris

Tourist Season,
Carl Hiaasen

The Talented Mr. Ripley,
Patricia Highsmith

On Beulah Height,
Reginald Hill

A Thief of Time,
Tony Hillerman

Cotton Comes to Harlem, Chester Himes

Hamlet, Revenge,
Michael Innes

An Unsuitable Job
for a Woman, P.D. James

The Ritual Bath,
Faye Kellerman

When the Bough Breaks, Jonathan Kellerman

The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Laurie King

Dark Nantucket Noon,
Jane Langton

The Spy Who Came In
From the Cold,
John LeCarre

To Kill a Mockingbird,
Harper Lee

Darkness, Take My Hand, Dennie Lehane

Get Shorty,
Elmore Leonard

Sleeping Dog,
Dick Lochte

Rough Cider,
Peter Lovesey

The Deep Blue Good-by,
John D. MacDonald

The List of Adrien Messenger, Philip MacDonald

The Chill,
Ross Macdonald

Bootlegger's Daughter,
Margaret Maron

Death of a Peer, Ngaio March

Sadie When She Died,
Ed McBain

The Sunday Hangman,
James McClure

If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-o, Sharyn McCrumb

Stranger in My Grave,
Margaret Millar

Devil in a Blue Dress,
Walter Moseley

Edwin of the Iron Shoes,
Marcia Muller

Death's Bright Angel,
Janet Neel

Mallory's Oracle,
Carol O'Connell

Child of Silence,
Abigail Padgett

Deadlock,
Sara Paretsky

Looking for Rachel Wallace, Robert Parker

The Club Dumas,
Arturo Perez-Reverte

Vanishing Act,
Thomas Perry

Crocodile on the Sandbank,
Elizabeth Peters

One Corpse Too Many,
Ellis Peters

Blue Lonesome,
Bill Pronzini

Cat of Many Tails,
Ellery Queen

No More Dying Then,
Ruth Rendell

The Wrong Murder,
Craig Rice

The Circular Staircase,
Mary Roberts Rinehart

Blood at the Root,
Peter Robinson

Strike Three You're Dead, Richard Rosen

A Broken Vessel,
Kate Ross

Concourse,
S.J. Rozan

Murder Must Advertise,
Dorothy Sayers

The Laughing Policeman, Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo

Some Buried Caesar,
Rex Stout

Brat Farrar,
Josephine Tey

Chinaman's Chance,
Ross Thomas

A Test of Wills,
Charles Todd

Presumed Innocent,
Scott Turow

The Sands of Windee,
Arthur Upfield

The Ice House, Minette Walters

Sanibel Flats,
Randy Wayne White

I Married a Dead Man,
Cornell Woolrich

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Posted on May 27, 2003

There is a mass of information on the web about mystery books. The following are just a few of the sites that provide information and links to other sites and online publications.

ClueLass
(www.cluelass.com)
Reviews, news, awards, and more.
This site has taken over the Mysterious Home Page, the very first website for mystery fans, established way back in 1994.

Mystery Books (www.sldirectory.com/)
A site that will direct you to dozens of other sites, including mysteries by topic, the history of the mystery novel, and more.

MysteryGuide
(www.mysteryguide.com)
A database of original mystery reviews, broken down by genres, plus author interviews and reader ratings.

The Gumshoe Site
(www.nsknet.or.jp/~jkimura)
A Japanese site in English
that presents up-to-date news, including awards and author interviews.

The Mystery Reader
(www.themysteryreader.com)
An extensive book review site plus features such as a guide to specialist small press publishers.

Mystery Vault
(www.mysteryvault.com)
A connection to an array of fan sites, forums, discussion groups, newsletters, and more.

Stop, You're Killing Me
(www.stopyourekillingme.com)
A site that lists the books of several hundred authors organized by series and nonseries.

Tangled Web
(www.twbooks.co.uk)
Hundreds of profiles of authors and bibliographies in crime, mystery, and fantastic fiction.

The Thrilling Detective
(www.thrillingdetective.com)
Its prime focus is private eye fiction, although it touches on other topics with essays on authors, bibliographies, and more.

The Ultimate Mystery/Detective Web Guide
(www.magicdragon.com/UltimateMystery/index.html)
More than 3,000 links to everything mysterious.

Once you're hooked

Abebooks
(www.abebooks.com)
Want to put together a collection
of a favorite detective? Looking for a rare hardbound edition from a favorite author? Perhaps the best place to start is Abebooks, which calls itself the world's largest online marketplace for used, rare, and out-of-print books. Here you can connect with thousands of independent booksellers around the world.

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Posted on May 27, 2003

The College's priceless collection of Olivier models has been updated, care of an unusual student project.

The nineteenth-century string models illustrate mathematical principles, and Mike Pinch,
a computer science major, used them as the basis for a senior project that tapped into his passion for creating virtual worlds.
Pinch, advised by Professor of Computer Science David Hannay and with support from Tom Smith, the College's web director, and Professor of Mathematics Davide Cervone, created virtual representations of some of the models. He then created a virtual Nott Memorial in which to display them.

The result is an impressively detailed program that combines two of the College's most spectacular treasures. Users can “walk around” the detailed interior of the College's centerpiece building (complete with portrait of Eliphalet Nott) and manipulate four virtual Olivier models placed on the center of the floor.

The virtual exhibit and tour can be downloaded at
http://www.union.edu/Olivier.

Pinch said he didn't start out with the idea of placing the models in a virtual Nott. But after discovering that he could produce a virtual model in a matter of days, much faster than he expected, he took on the larger challenge of constructing a virtual gallery. “I knew right away how to put it together,” he said.

With his notes from a vector calculus class he took freshman year (“If I had known it would be so much use to me I would have paid better attention,” he admits), a handful of textbooks, and his developing skills in video simulation programming, Pinch set out on a project that consumed most of his waking hours during the last winter break.

He studied the models (through their glass cases) and wrote programs so the user could manipulate the intersecting geometric shapes the way that Olivier had intended. He also included photographs of the real models and text that identifies each one and describes the geometric
principles it illustrates.

He took photographs of the encaustic tiles on the floor of the Nott, created the sixteen dark-green support columns, and even added the large portrait of Nott. As for artistic license, he used some medieval-looking carved wood doors instead of the real glass ones. And visitors can go through a wall to the “outside,” where they can look back at a view of a mythical Nott suspended in a bubble.

The string models were invented in the mid-nineteenth century by Théodore Olivier of the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. Their purpose was to illustrate the intersections of shapes and surfaces. Union Professor William Gillespie, who knew Olivier personally, purchased the models, which were acquired by the College after Gillespie's death in 1868. The College's collection of more than fifty models is believed to be the largest of its kind in the world. Some of the models are on display in the Science and Engineering Center and the F.W. Olin Center.

The models, highly regarded as both works of science and works of art, have been featured in articles in the scientific and mainstream press. A curator from the Smithsonian recently visited to inspect the models. Most of them were restored and cataloged in recent years by the late Professor of Mathematics William Stone, an effective advocate for publicizing the treasures.

But the Oliviers are fragile, and most people (including Pinch) have seen them only through glass. Cervone, who has become something of a caretaker for the models, said he finds Pinch's virtual versions “more true to the originals in that they can be manipulated. This is what Olivier would have done if he was around today.”
Pinch, who also minors in math, played center on the football team, served as president of Kappa Sigma fraternity, and studied on a term abroad in Scotland. He plans to pursue a career in computer simulation-widely used in video game and military applications- and he is considering a graduate program in the field.

“Mike showed a lot of
initiative, and he found the right tools to do this project,” said Hannay. (Pinch used C++ and OpenGL.) Hannay noted that Pinch experienced the revelation of applying computer science theory to
a real application, something many engineers don't get until after they graduate. “That's a common experience,” said Hannay, “but it usually takes a little longer. I get notes from students who are five years out who say they are grateful for the theory course they took.”

“Mike did a great job of
re-creating the models and the Nott,” said Smith. “I am thrilled to use this as part of our effort to showcase the Olivier models online. And best of all, there's no danger of breaking anything.”

Science and elegance…

The Olivier models have been described as the most elegant and ingenious collection of descriptive-geometry models ever created.

Handsome wood bases support brass frames that in turn carry brass forms in various shapes, circular and straight; from numerous tiny holes stretch colored threads that represent the surfaces of various geometric figures. All are members of a class of figures called three-dimensional ruled surfaces, so called because straight lines, or rules, can be drawn through any point on them. Almost all of them have moving parts, which can demonstrate the various properties of ruled surfaces. Many, in fact, represent the intersection of two or more such surfaces –a pair of cones, for example, or a cylinder and a plane.

The models, constructed in the mid-nineteenth century, were designed by Théodore Olivier, a professor of descriptive geometry at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris. What makes the Union models unique is that they are all originals, made by hand to their inventor's specifications.

The Union collection is Olivier's original set; the Conservatoire in Paris has another set, although it is less complete than Union's. Credit for restoring Union's collection belongs to the late William Stone '42, a professor of mathematics who missed the models when he returned to the College to teach in the 1950s. He eventually found them in an attic, much the worse for wear, and spent several decades overseeing their restoration, with a good deal of the work done by students.

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