Bruce Sagan

Bruce Eli Sagan (born March 29, 1954) is an American Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Michigan State University. He specializes in enumerative, algebraic, and topological combinatorics. He is also known as a musician, playing music from Scandinavia and the Balkans.

Early life Sagan is the son of Eugene Benjamin Sagan and Arlene Kaufmann Sagan, and a cousin of astronomer Carl Sagan. Growing up in Berkeley, California, Sagan began playing classical violin at a young age under the influence of his mother, a music teacher and conductor. After earning his B.S. in mathematics (1974) from California State University, East Bay (then called California State University, Hayward), Sagan pursued graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his Ph.D. in mathematics (1979). His doctoral thesis, "Partially Ordered Sets with Hooklengths – an Algorithmic Approach," was supervised by Richard P. Stanley, making Sagan Stanley's third doctoral student. During his graduate school years, Sagan also joined the Mandala Folkdance Ensemble, eventually becoming its music director.

Mathematical career Sagan held postdoctoral positions at Université Louis Pasteur (1979–1980), the University of Michigan (1980–1983), University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, Middlebury College (1984–1985), the University of Pennsylvania, and Université du Québec à Montréal (Fall, 1985), before becoming a faculty member at MSU in the Spring of 1986. He has held visiting positions at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (Spring, 1988), UCSD (Spring, 1991), the Royal Institute of Technology (1993–1994), MSRI (Winter, 1997), the Isaac Newton Institute (Winter, 2001), Mittag-Leffler Institute (Spring, 2005), and DIMACS (2005–2006). He was also a rotating Program Officer at the National Science Foundation (2007–2010).

Sagan has published over 100 research papers. He has given over 300 talks in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. These have included keynote addresses at the International Conference on Formal Power Series and Algebraic Combinatorics (2006), the British Combinatorial Conference (2011), and Permutation Patterns (2015). He has graduated 15 Ph.D. students.

Sagan has been an Editor-in-Chief for the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics since 2004.

Books Mathematical Essays in Honor of Gian-Carlo Rota (co-edited with Richard P. Stanley), Birkhäuser, Cambridge, 1998. The Symmetric Group: Representations, Combinatorial Algorithms, and Symmetric Functions, 2nd edition, Springer-Verlag, New York, 2001. Festschrift in Honor of Richard Stanley (special editor), Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 2004–2006.

Selected papers

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Musical career Sagan plays music from the Scandinavian countries and the Balkans on fiddle and native instruments. These include the Swedish nyckelharpa, the Norwegian hardingfele, and the Bulgarian gadulka. In 1985 he and his then wife, Judy Barlas, founded the music and dance camp Scandinavian Week at Buffalo Gap (now known as Nordic Fiddles and Feet). He is currently a regular staff member at Northern Week at Ashokan run by Jay Ungar and Molly Mason. In 1994 he was awarded the Zorn Medal in Bronze for his playing in front of a jury of Swedish musicians. He has performed and given workshops in North America, Europe, and Australia. He plays Swedish music as a duo with Brad Battey and also with Lydia Ievens. His trio Veselba, with Nan Nelson and Chris Rietz, performs music from Bulgaria.

Discography Andrea Hoag (fiddle, vocals) and Bruce Sagan (fiddle, hardingfele, nyckelharpa) with Larry Robinson (bouzouki), Spelstundarna, E. Thomas ETD 102, 1993. 20 tunes in Scandinavian style. Bruce Sagan (fiddle, hardingfele, nyckelharpa, gâdulka) with Brad Battey (fiddle), Nan Nelson (bass, tambura) and Chris Rietz (guitar, kaval), With Friends, 2002. 15 tunes in Scandinavian and Bulgarian styles. lydia ievins (fiddle, nyckelharpa) and Bruce Sagan (fiddle, nyckelharpa, hardingfele), Northlands, 2010. 18 tunes composed mainly by the performers in Scandinavian style.