Henry W. Gould

Henry Wadsworth Gould (born August 26, 1928) is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at West Virginia University. 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. 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.

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.

His Star of David theorem (1972) is a mathematical result on arithmetic properties of binomial coefficients. 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.

He has been a consultant with the National Security Agency, principal investigator at West Virginia University with several College of Arts and Sciences grants, and grants from the National Science Foundation on the topic of Combinatorial Identities, and has served as a reviewer for the Mathematical Reviews and the Zentralblatt für Mathematik.

Between 1974 and 1976, he was a visiting lecturer for the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

In 1976, he was an invited participant to the first Annual Symposium on the History of Mathematics held at the National Museum of Science and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., concerned with Cauchy's contributions to analysis. Gould has published extensive bibliographies on combinatorial topics and on Cauchy's integral theorem.

In March 1988, Gould received the Benedum Distinguished Scholar Award for Physical Sciences and Technology at West Virginia University.

In 1990, Gould was elected a Foundation Fellow of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications.

In 1999, Volume 204 of the journal Discrete Mathematics was dedicated in honor of Gould and his work and contained numerous invited papers in his honor. The volume was edited by Ira M. Gessel and Louis W. Shapiro, assisted by others. It contained an amusing biographical preface by the editors.

In 2006, an article entitled "An Interview with H. W. Gould", by Scott H. Brown, appears in the College Mathematics Journal.

On 20 Sept. 2007, a mathematics colloquium was held in Gould's honor, at which time George Andrews, Evan Pugh Professor in the department of mathematics at The Pennsylvania State University and president-elect of the American Mathematical Society, presented a paper "Gould’s Function and Problems in Partitions," as part of the WVU Distinguished Lecture Series in Mathematics in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. Andrews' paper was motivated by Gould's 1964 paper on compositions into relatively prime parts.

On 10 March 2010, Gould was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications at the 19th Annual General Meeting of the Institute at Florida Atlantic University.

Personal life Henry Gould is married to Jean West Gould and together they live in Morgantown, West Virginia. His late first wife Josephine Angotti Gould (1932–1994) owned a pet shop and was active with art and published articles about birds and tropical fish. They raised orchids and founded and ran a local orchid society for 15 years.