Holy Cross Alumnus to Compare Music and Math in Annual Lecture

WORCESTER, Mass. – Rick Miranda ‘74, professor of mathematics, provost and executive vice president at Colorado State University, will give the 17th annual Leonard C. Sulski Memorial Lecture in Mathematics on Monday, April 12 at 5 p.m. in Room 154 of the Smith Labs at the College of the Holy Cross. The lecture titled “Musical, Physical, and Mathematical Intervals: How Fretting a Guitar is More Complicated (and More Simple) Than One Might Think” is free and open to the public.

In addition, the department of mathematics and computer science will dedicate the Vincent O. McBrien student common room at 4 p.m. in Swords 307.

Miranda is a distinguished mathematician and was a student of professors McBrien and Sulski.  He earned his B.A. from Holy Cross and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Recently he was appointed as provost, the top academic position, at Colorado State University.  Prior to his position as provost, Miranda served as dean of the College of Natural Sciences and chair of the department of mathematics.  He is the author of numerous books and journal articles relating to mathematical theorems.  In his talk he will review how the history of mathematics relates to music theory.

“In 1743 Daniel Strahle (a craftsman with no apparent mathematical training) designed a simple geometric construction for placing the frets on a guitar that approximated the proper ratio,” explains Miranda. “It was wrongly dismissed at the time as being inaccurate (by mathematicians no less!), but over 200 years later, in the second half of the 20th century, it was shown to be related to two simple and important approximation techniques (for functions and for irrational numbers), and to be extremely accurate.”

In the summer of 2008, Holy Cross’ department of mathematics and computer science began a drive to establish an endowment fund in memory of Professor Vincent O. McBrien, who taught at the College from 1944-78.  During his time at the College, McBrien was a leading force in building the department into a premier institution. The fund will be used to rename the current student common room in Swords 307 as the Vincent O. McBrien student common room.  Other proceeds from the fund will benefit student research projects such as summer research, travel to professional meetings for presentations, and the purchase of research materials.

The annual lecture series is a tribute to Professor Sulski, who taught in the mathematics department at Holy Cross from 1965 until his untimely death from leukemia in 1991.

For more information contact Tom Cecil, professor of mathematics at Holy Cross and organizer of the event, at 508-793-2719.