Frank A. Farris is an American mathematician. He is a professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Santa Clara University. He is also an editor, author, and artist whose work concerns mathematical topics. Farris is known primarily for mathematical exposition, his creation of visual mathematics through computer science, and advocacy for mathematical art as a discipline.

Education

Farris was born in

Santa Monica, California Santa Monica (; Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. Census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing t ...

. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to

Covina Covina is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, about east of downtown Los Angeles, in the San Gabriel Valley. The population was 51,268 according to the 2020 census, up from 47,796 at the 2010 census. The city's slogan, "On ...

, a suburb of Los Angeles. He showed interest and proficiency in a large variety of subjects such as astronomy. At the age of 15, he enrolled in the NSF summer science training program, designed to enrich mathematical talent in America. Farris studied mathematics as an undergraduate at

Pomona College Pomona College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It was established in 1887 by a group of Congregationalists who wanted to recreate a "college of the New England type" in Southern California. In 1925, it became t ...

and received his Ph.D. at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. His dissertation ''Spiralling Chains in CR Manifolds'' was supervised by

Richard Burt Melrose Richard Burt Melrose is an Australian mathematician and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who works on geometric analysis, partial differential equations, and differential geometry. Education Melrose received in 1974 his P ...

. His time at MIT led him to pursue pure mathematics with a focus on geometry.

Career

Farris taught at Brown University for three years, before becoming an assistant professor in Santa Clara University in 1984. He was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 1988 and was promoted to full professor in 2017. He was awarded the Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching by the Golden Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) in 2018. Farris was the editor of ''

Mathematics Magazine ''Mathematics Magazine'' is a refereed bimonthly publication of the Mathematical Association of America. Its intended audience is teachers of collegiate mathematics, especially at the junior/senior level, and their students. It is explicitly a j ...

'' from 2001 to 2005, and then again in 2009. His article "The Edge of the Universe" for ''

Math Horizons ''Math Horizons'' is a magazine aimed at undergraduates interested in mathematics, published by the Mathematical Association of America. It publishes expository articles about "beautiful mathematics" as well as articles about the culture of mathem ...

'' received the Trevor Adams Award from the MAA. In 2015, his book ''Creating Symmetry: The Artful Mathematics of Wallpaper Patterns'', which conveys his artistic method, was published by the

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financia ...

. It was awarded the PROSE Award in Mathematics from the

Association of American Publishers The Association of American Publishers (AAP) is the national trade association of the American book publishing industry. AAP lobbies for book, journal, and education publishers in the United States. AAP members include most of the major commercia ...

, Honorable Mention, in 2016, and the Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award in 2018. It is profiled in numerous periodicals including Quanta and

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it ...

Work method

Farris generates organic mathematical art using symmetry, patterns, and wave functions. He commonly works with wallpaper patterns using photographs as source material. The wallpaper often exhibit translational symmetry across two independent axes. He has created work that gives the illusion of five-fold

rotational symmetry Rotational symmetry, also known as radial symmetry in geometry, is the property a shape has when it looks the same after some rotation by a partial turn. An object's degree of rotational symmetry is the number of distinct orientations in which i ...

in the

Wallpaper group A wallpaper is a mathematical object covering a whole Euclidean plane by repeating a motif indefinitely, in manner that certain isometries keep the drawing unchanged. To a given wallpaper there corresponds a group of such congruent transformati ...

. His award-winning artwork has been profiled by the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

, He promotes a visual and computational perspective of math through his art, seminars, writing, etc. typically aimed towards undergraduates and mathematicians.

LGBTQIA+ Community

Farris is an active member of the LGBTQIA+ community. He has worked for the advancement of LGBTQIA+ mathematicians, for instance, in the formation of Spectra (mathematical association). In 2014, he married William O. Beeman; they had been a couple since 1984. In 2021, he was profiled in the podcast "Count Me In with Della and Deanna".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Farris, Frank 20th-century American mathematicians Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Pomona College alumni Santa Clara University faculty People from Covina, California Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Brown University faculty American artists 21st-century American mathematicians American LGBT scientists LGBT mathematicians