NEWS

Local angle: Winston-Salem

By DEE REID

College of Arts and Sciences

CHAPEL HILL -- Dr. Christopher K.R.T. Jones, an internationally recognized mathematics scholar from Brown University, has been appointed the first Guthridge Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The appointment, effective Jan. 1, 2003, was approved earlier this month by the UNC Board of Governors.

The professorship is named in honor of Bill Guthridge, the former Tar Heel men’s basketball coach who earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Kansas State University, where he began his coaching career in 1960.

The professorship was established by gifts from Charles and Beth Duckett and John and Mary Louise Burress, all Carolina alumni from Winston Salem, with matching funds from the North Carolina Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust Fund.

Jones came to Carolina this fall as a visiting professor. Previously he was director of the Lefschetz Center for Dynamical Systems at Brown University, where he also had been professor of applied mathematics since 1990. Among many honors, he received the Faculty Mentor of the Year Award from the Compact for Faculty Diversity in 1999 and the Senior U.S. Scientist Award from the Humboldt Foundation at the University of Stuttgart in 1993-94.

Jones is considered a world leader in the area of applied dynamical systems, said Dr. Warren Wogen, chairman of the department of mathematics.

Jones’ interests span both pure and applied mathematics. His research makes important mathematical contributions to problems in science and at the same time generates new mathematical problems, Wogen said. For example, Jones’ recent theoretical work at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has made a significant contribution to the understanding of ocean flow.

He received a doctoral degree in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1979.

Guthridge received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a master’s degree in education from Kansas State, where he played basketball. He was an assistant men’s basketball coach for five seasons at Kansas State before he joined the Carolina staff in 1967 to work with Dean Smith. When Smith retired in 1997, Guthridge took over as head coach for three more seasons. He was named National Coach of the Year by the National Association of Basketball Coaches and ACC Coach of the Year.

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College of Arts and Sciences contact: Dee Reid, (919) 843-6339, dee_reid@unc.edu

News Services contact: Mike McFarland, (919) 962-2091, mike_mcfarland@unc.edu