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Thomas Edison said
that to invent, you need “a good imagination and a pile of junk.”The Exeter graduates assembled here have all been gifted with imagination. If there’s a common theme in their life stories, it can be found in a refusal to accept things as they are and an ability to ask,“What if?”As for the piles of junk, though some of the inventors and innovators we have chosen to profile do not literally work with stuff that happens to be lying around, all of them demonstrate an admirable ability to mine their passions—whether it’s power sources for motors or neurosurgery—and take them in uncharted directions.These visionaries bring together disparate strands in surprising ways and are not fixed in their thinking, about their work or their lives.What makes them inventors, first and foremost, is their openness to change. The inventions represented by this group of Exeter alumni/ae range from ones that enhance our enjoyment of common pastimes (better sound quality in FM stereo systems) to ones that save lives (image-guided surgery). They include the ubiquitous (cell phone technology) and the academic (new approaches to algebraic geometry).They point to the future (innovative solar panels) and offer solutions to old problems (optics that protect soldiers in battle). They span more than a half-century of innovation, from electrical motors to the complex application of computer technology.We salute these Exeter graduates for their accomplishments and contributions toward making our lives better.
ive Exonians BRIAN CROWLEY
David Mumford ’53 was presented with the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest honor in science, by President Obama in a ceremony at the White House this fall. Though he knew he had been nominated, he forgot all about the award until he received a background check request from the FBI. Official word followed, and he went in search of a tuxedo that is “not frequent attire” for him. “Often the award goes to a younger person who has done something spectacular,” he says.“Mathematicians tend to have more cumulative accomplishments.” Mumford’s “cumulative accomplishments” are many. He is best known for inventing geometric invariant theory, a key tool in the study of geometric structures.This innovation fundamentally changed algebraic geometry and garnered him the prestigious Fields Medal, the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in mathematics, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. There are likely As a student at Exeter, Mumford was focused on physics and astronomy, and built other noteworthy a computer in the attic of the old Thompson Science Building using relays from Exonian inventors World War II.“I screwed the relays into plywood and hooked them up,” he recalls.“It who also deserve was very primitive, but it could add basic numbers.”The results of the computations mention. If you are were recorded on paper tape. Mumford submitted the project to the Westinghouse an inventor, or know Science Talent Search contest and was a finalist. He was unable to get the computer of one, please email to work at the exhibit in Washington and, while on display back at Exeter, the device bulletin@exeter.edu caught fire when a spark hit the paper tape.“I felt my future lay in theoretical science with a brief descripat that point,” Mumford says with a laugh. tion. We will run a A course in quantum field theory at Harvard convinced him that he was not a list of these Exonians physicist, and he turned to mathematics. Mumford completed his undergraduate and their creations degree and Ph.D. at Harvard, and joined the Harvard faculty. After 20 years of work in the spring issue of in pure mathematics, he left Harvard to teach at Brown, where he embarked on projthe Bulletin.
David Mumford ’53, inventor of geometric invariant theory, is currently working on the history of mathematics.
WINTER 2011
The Exeter Bulletin
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