Hartley Rogers

Education

Born in 1926 in Buffalo, New York, he studied under Alonzo Church at Princeton, and received his Doctor of Philosophy there in 1952.

Career

The Rogers equivalence theorem is named after him. He served on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty from 1956 until his death, July 17, 2015. He also ran a seminar called 18.S34: Mathematical Problem Solving for Massachusetts Institute of Technology freshmen.

Rogers is known within the Massachusetts Institute of Technology undergraduate community also for having developed a multivariable calculus course (18022: Multivariable Calculus with Theory) with the explicit goal of providing a firm mathematical foundation for the study of physics.

In 2005 he announced that he would no longer be teaching the course himself, but it is likely that it will continue to be taught in a similar manner in the future. He is remembered for his witty mathematical comments during lectures as well as his tradition of awarding Leibniz Cookies and Fig Newtons to top performers in his class.

His doctoral students included Patrick Fischer, Louis Hodes, Carl Jockusch, Andrew Kahr, David Luckham, Rohit Parikh, David Park, and John Stillwell. In his spare time, he served for many years as the Chaplain for the World Indoor Rowing Championships as part of the C.R.A.S.H.-B. Sprints Board of Directors.

"That was a horrible misconception..and your misconception is even more horrible."

"That would be like my saying, "All unicorns in the Boston Zoo are purple." That"s true even though there are no unicorns in the Boston Zoo, because if you were to find one there, it would be purple."

"What"s incorrect is your wrong idea.

Maybe you don"t have the wrong idea. Maybe I"m fighting a strong person.".

Achievements

• There he had been involved in many scholarly extracurricular activities, including running SPUR (Summer Program in Undergraduate Research) for Massachusetts Institute of Technology undergraduates, overseeing the mathematics section of RSI (Research Science Institute) for advanced high school students, and coaching the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Putnam exam team for nearly two decades starting in 1990, including the years 2003 and 2004 when Massachusetts Institute of Technology won for the first time since 1979. Rogers won the Lester R. Ford Award in 1965 for his expository article Information Theory.

Views

Quotations: "That was a horrible misconception..and your misconception is even more horrible."

"That would be like my saying, "All unicorns in the Boston Zoo are purple." That"s true even though there are no unicorns in the Boston Zoo, because if you were to find one there, it would be purple."

"What"s incorrect is your wrong idea. Maybe you don"t have the wrong idea. Maybe I"m fighting a strong person.".

Membership

An avid oarsman, he was most recently a member of the Cambridge Boat Club on the Charles River, Cambridge, Master of Arts.