AL LEISENRING

After growing up in a small town in Pennsylvania I followed the family tradition
by going to Yale. There I took a wide variety of courses in the sciences and humanities.
I believed in the philosophy of a liveral education and hoped to bridge the gap between
C.P. Snow's Two Cultures.  At the end of my junior year I had to decide whether to major
in math or classics.  I chose the former, mainly because of Sputnik.

On graduating from Yale with a BA in 1960 I had very little idea of what I wanted to do
with my life other than continuing my education. The next seven years I spent studying
and teaching abroad --two years at Cambridge, two years in Switzerland, and three years
at the University of London, where I received my Ph.D. in mathematical logic in 1967.

Since then I have been teaching undergraduate mathematics, first at Reed College in Portland, Oregon and then at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. In contrast to my academic experience at Yale where I concentrated on breadth rather than depth, my work for the past 12 years has been confined to the narrow area of pure mathe- matics. Although I find this work very exciting and stimulating, I often find it difficult to justify. Similarly I have been worried whether the typical under- graduate mathematics curriculum really provides the student with the knowledge he needs for his future. These concerns, together with a fear of stagnation, account for my coming to Evergreen.

My surroundings are very important to me. I dislike city life, and enjoy the out of doors. My wife, whom I met on a skiing trip to Austria, shares my love of natural beauty and the out of doors, and together we look forward to our life in the northwest.