Word: math
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...dream that "one day a shuttle would once again make its way to the launchpad to launch Americans into space." A religious man, he says his anxiety about the mission was "soothed by my faith in God." Hilmers, who doubles as Covey's backup pilot, is a math whiz. He graduated summa cum laude from Cornell College, in Iowa, and earned an electrical-engineering degree from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. He joined the Marines in 1972, and was selected as an astronaut in 1980. Hilmers was mission specialist on the first flight of the orbiter Atlantis five years later...
When he was taking a high school geometry class, Gleason says he suddenly realized he understood more about math than did his teacher. While his contemporaries were having difficulties solving proofs and determining the volumes of spheres, he understood the subject well enough to help his teacher with the explanations in class--an experience that led him to his decision to become a researcher and a teacher...
Gleason majored in math as an undergraduate at Yale, and after a stint in the Navy during World War II, he became a junior fellow at the Society of Fellows program at Harvard...
...stronghold of Ph.D. s, which seemed to be oppressive in American academia at the time," says Gleason, a New York native. "So I don't have a doctorate in mathematics and have never written a thesis, but with the fellowship I could study anything I wanted, and I studied math...
Gleason then returned to the Navy and served two years in the Korean War. He returned to Harvard in 1952 to become an assistant professor of math, a full faculty member in 1957 and the Hollis Professor of Mathematiks and Natural Sciences chair 12 years later...