HARPUR perspective
Distinguished Professors A practical man in an abstract world
An understanding man in a changing world
Many of the most influential findings of Shelley Zacks
The American cultural landscape is rapidly changing. Many
have arisen out of the practical need to address real-world
predict that by 2050, whites of European descent will
problems — how to track inventory, aiding the military
make up barely 50 percent of the U.S. population. Already
in “seeing” an enemy in blind situations, training IBM
non-Hispanic whites are a minority in four states, including
engineers in basic statistical quality control and helping
California and Texas. In nine more states, non-Hispanic
doctors treat cancer.
whites are approaching minority status.
The practicality is a bit surprising for a man who is
Yet, besides the color of the skin, this change is
comfortable uttering sentences like, “I later derived the
nothing new in
Bayes equivariant estimators of variance components.”
the American
(For the record, Microsoft Word doesn’t recognize the
experience. For
word “equivariant.”)
well over 150 years,
“Some mathematicians like to work on abstract
foreign groups
things — they don’t care whether it is applicable or not,”
flocked to the
says Zacks. “Usually what I like is to get a good applied
United States in
problem and try to develop the mathematics around it.
successive waves,
A model should not be built around some mathematical
concentrating
analysis just for
in big-city
the sake of doing
neighborhoods
mathematics alone.”
and small towns,
It’s hard to overstate
making many
Zacks’ influence on the
native-born
field and on industry.
Americans anxious
He’s published seven
as the immigrants
ground-breaking books,
changed the look John Frazier
each written after applying mathematics
and feel of their new environs.
to a real-world problem
“I try to show students historically that it’s a
like helping a soil
constant trend,” says geography Professor John
scientist figure out
Frazier, who was recently named distinguished service
a common mean of
professor by SUNY and given the Ethnic Geography
mineral distribution.
Career Award by the Association of American
In 2009, the journal
Geographers for his pioneering work on ethnicity. “The
Communications in Statistics – Theory and
role of human geography is to explain what places in Shelley Zacks
Methods dedicated
the country are like and how they are changing, and in this context, due to immigration and ethnicity.” Frazier
an entire issue to his work, with 40 scientists submitting
is also revered as the founder of the Conference on Race,
articles influenced by Zacks’ contributions. Earlier this year,
Place, and Ethnicity, which he and a group of colleagues
SUNY named Zacks a distinguished professor.
initiated at Binghamton University in 2002.
Read more at binghamton.edu/harpur/perspective/ faculty/distinguished-professor-zacks.html
Read more at binghamton.edu/harpur/perspective/ faculty/distinguished-professor-frazier.html
Fall 2011
Harpur College of Arts and Sciences
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