Nathaniel Dean

Nathaniel Dean (January 9, 1956 – January 2021 ) was an African-American mathematician and educator who made contributions to abstract and algorithmic graph theory, as well as data visualization and parallel computing.

Education

Dean received his B.S. in Mathematics and Physics from Mississippi State University in 1978. He then received his M.S. in Applied Mathematics from Northeastern University in 1983. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Vanderbilt University in 1987, with a doctoral thesis titled "Contractible Edges and Conjectures about Path and Cycle Numbers".

Dean was quite involved with other professional societies in mathematics as well. He served on the board of governors of the Mathematical Association of America from 2005 to 2007, and served as chair of MSRI's Human Resources Advisory Committee (HRAC) from 2005 to 2007. In 2010, he gave the Pi Mu Epsilon J. Sutherland Frame Lecture on "Incomprehensibility".

Dean's fifth and final Ph.D. student graduated from Texas State University in 2010, with a thesis on secondary school mathematics pedagogy.