The academic excellence that thrives at Bishop McNamara High School is not limited to the School walls. From Forestville to D.C., to Belize and beyond, several BMHS faculty members have traveled far and wide in the name of education. While social studies teacher and Chair of the Social Studies Department Michael Pozniak is well-known and renowned for his travels, which boast more than 40 countries strong, this summer three other faculty members also packed their travel bags. Math teacher Michael Fox-Boyd traveled to Russia. English teacher Emily Grice traveled to Belize. Junior class counselor Kristian Owens '05 traveled to the hallowed halls of the White House in Washington, D.C. These esteemed faculty members traveled as a part of professional development to help them not only spread the word about Bishop McNamara High School, but to also bring back priceless experiences and information to help shape their work with our own students. Michael’s journey to Russia began with the story of a city that no longer exists as maps know it. During the 1700s, the city of Königsberg spanned both sides of the Pregel River, with two islands that were connected to themselves and to the mainland by a set of seven bridges. Carl Gottlieb Ehler, renowned as a mathematician and later as the mayor of the then-Prussian capital of Danzig, was fascinated by the bridges, and corresponded with Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler about them. The main focus of their letters: Why is it impossible to determine a route that would allow someone to cross all seven bridges without crossing any of them more than once? Their correspondence and collaboration on what would later become known as the Königsberg Bridge Problem led to the development of a particular field of mathematics: Graph theory. “Mathematics comes from two places,” Michael said. “It comes from necessity, like Newton and gravity, and it comes from wonder, like geometry and what happens when we draw a particular shape.”
Ehler's hand-drawn diagram of the Bridges of Königsberg.
Because most grants for funding are centralized around history, social studies, English and language arts, there is limited funding for mathematics grants. Michael explained that he was able to find a grant prospect in the Fund for Teachers website. With the help of Director of Professional Development Charles Shryock IV, Michael was able to develop a grant to allow him to travel and study directly the origins of graph theory.
Michael Fox-Boyd in Russia
Thanks to the Fund for Teachers grant, Michael traveled to St. Petersburg for four days and to the current site of Königsberg for two. During his time there, Michael spent the majority of his time in museums to study the history of the area, and particularly the history of the Königsberg Bridge Problem. “Peter the Great brought Euler to the Russian Academy of Sciences,” Michael explained how the Swiss mathematician ended up near Königsberg in the first place. “As a progressive ruler, he brought all the best scientists and mathematicians into Russia.
So the letters exchanged between Euler and Ehler are at the Russian Academy’s Archive in St. Petersburg.” Michael explained that most of his days were spent translating the letters from Latin and Italian into English. There was a great deal of correspondence between the two mathematicians, he said; but in particular there were three key letters that pertained to the Königsberg Bridge Problem and to graph theory. He was able to hold the actual letters, which are 300 years old at least, in his hands! During World War II, the Soviet Union bombed the city of Königsberg, which resulted in the destruction of two of the seven bridges to the river islands. After the war, the Soviet Union rebuilt and renamed the city to Kaliningrad, as it is known to this day. During his visit, Michael witnessed the damage wrought during the war as well as the reconstruction efforts that were made afterwards, as his hotel was only a couple hundred yards from one of the islands featured in the Königsberg Bridge problem. “[The Soviet Union] bombed two bridges that entered one of the islands and built this highway over it – it’s like this horrible new thing on top of this beautiful old structure,” Michael said. “Some of the original bridges are still intact though, and the way they’re set up now you can actually walk across all of them without repeating a bridge.”
THE MUSTANG MESSENGER
11