Henry Wadsworth Gould (born August 26, 1928) is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at West Virginia University.
Early life and education
Gould was born in Portsmouth, Virginia. Between 1945 and 1947, he attended National Radio Institute in Washington D.C. In 1946, he graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Portsmouth, Virginia. In 1946–1948 he studied at Old Dominion University and then at the University of Virginia. He worked at WUVA radio 1948–1957. In 1951 to 1952, he studied communications theory at The Southeastern Signal School (TSESS), Fort Gordon, Georgia. He received a B.A. in mathematics in 1954 and an M.A. Mathematics in 1956, both from the University of Virginia. In 1957, he attended University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1957–1958, where he served as research assistant to Professor Alfred Brauer. In 1958, he moved to Morgantown, West Virginia.
Academic career
In 1958, he joined the faculty of West Virginia University as an instructor, and received the rank of professor in 1969. In spring 2007, he became professor emeritus, after 49 years of service at West Virginia University.
Research
Gould has published over 200 papers, which have appeared in about 20 countries. His research has been in combinatorial analysis, number theory, special functions of mathematical physics, and the history of mathematics and astronomy. Gould served as mathematics consultant to the 'Dear Abby' newspaper column. He wrote an explanation of the three ancient Greek problems (trisecting an angle, squaring the circle, and duplicating the cube); a pamphlet on this material was sent to hundreds of readers (mostly secondary school students) in every state and overseas, who wanted to know more about these famous problems.
In 1957, some of his early work from 1956 was used by Oakley and Wisner to enumerate hexaflexagons.
In 1965, Professors Hsu and Gould began a research collaboration. Gould has also been an associate editor of the on-line electronic Journal of Integer Sequences, and has been a member of the editorial board of the journal Applicable Analysis and Discrete Mathematics published by the University of Belgrade, Serbia.
Between 1976 and 1977, he directed a Research Program at West Virginia University under auspices of the Office of the Provost, concerned with mathematical computations for coal mine valuation, using Bondurant's variation of the Hoskold actuarial formula.
Among his activities in the 2000s, Gould began a research collaboration with Dr. Jocelyn Quaintance, Visiting Research Assistant Professor of Mathematics at West Virginia University in 2006–2010. They worked on a long-term revision of Gould's 1972 book "Combinatorial Identities", and Gould's handwritten manuscript notes covering 1945–1990.
His Star of David theorem (1972) is a mathematical result on arithmetic properties of binomial coefficients.
Professional activities
From 1961 to 1971, Gould founded and circulated a mathematical serial Mathematica Monongaliae, of which 12 issues were published. Several of these have been reprinted extensively, such as issue No. 12, a "Bibliography of Bell and Catalan Numbers". This annotated bibliography was cited in two separate articles by Martin Gardner in his mathematical column in the Scientific American magazine. Issue No. 10, a "Chronological Bibliography of the Cauchy Integral Theorem" listing 200 proofs of the famous theorem was coauthored with Herbert K. Fallin. The bibliography was cited in the journal Historia Mathematica. With the aid of graduate student Timothy Glatzer of West Virginia University, the Bell and Catalan number bibliography has been revised and re-alphabetized and it is available online.
In 1962, Gould was one of the founding editors of the number theory journal Fibonacci Quarterly and for many years has been an associate editor of the Journal of Mathematical Research and Exposition founded by Leetsch C. Hsu and published at Dalian, People's Republic of China.
Honors
In 1957, Gould was elected as a full member of the Sigma Xi Research Society for his distinction in mathematics at the University of Virginia, and the Beta Chapter of the national mathematics honorary Pi Mu Epsilon at the University of North Carolina.
In 1963, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In 1967, he became one of the charter members of the Alpha chapter of Pi Mu Epsilon mathematics honorary at West Virginia University.
Between 1967 and 1970, he was a visiting lecturer for the Mathematical Association of America.