William F. Hammond

Department of Mathematics and Statistics
The University at Albany
1400 Washington Avenue
Albany, New York 12222
Phone: (518) 442-4625
Email: hammond
Domain: math•albany•edu

Information for My Students

My Current and Forthcoming Courses: Information for students currently in my courses and, as available, information on the courses that I am planning to teach.
Information for My Advisees (also available as PDF for printing): My advisees should review this as the time for registration approaches.

GELLMU

Generalized Extensible LaTeX-Like MarkUp (GELLMU) is the name of my project that originated with the aim of building a bridge from traditional LaTeX to the new world of XML languages. From September 2, 2004 “regular” GELLMU provides automatic production of article-level documents from a single LaTeX-like source file to both (1) the modern form of HTML extended by MathML for optimal, fully accessible, online content and (2) Adobe's portable document format (PDF) for printing.

Overall GELLMU is a complex project with modular design. At the front end it offers the use of simple LaTeX-like markup, with a macro language taking arguments, to facilitate writing for most SGML document types including DocBook, HTML, TEI, and XHTML. (One must, of course, know enough of the vocabulary of one's document type to suit the needs of one's content.)

Mathematical Research Interests

The range of my research interests falls within the territory spanned by number theory and algebraic geometry. More specifically, most of my investigations have involved modular forms, the geometry of Hilbert modular surfaces, theta functions, abelian varieties, and "reduction" of Schwartz-Bruhat functions.

Course Materials

There is a small collection of special course notes, course-related software, and miscellaneous pedagogical material.

Mathematics and the Network

By the fall of 1992 I had become fascinated with the new ability, thanks to the network, to have the library come to my office. In particular, I could go looking around the world for articles about mathematics and have them appear -- in full typeset glory -- on the screen in my office. I have become greatly interested in working to bring the library closer to my office and, indeed, my home.

Recent Presentations

Curriculum vita

A few pointers

SAGE: Open Source Mathematics Software: The grand unification of computer algebra systems. Sage will play a major role in my spring 2008 course Math 587, Modern Computing for Mathematicians. There is much interesting reading in the SAGE blog kept by William Stein, the founder. For example see the comment “Why I like Sage” by Jason Grout of Iowa State.
I Will Derive: A math video at YouTube, more fun than serious, pitched for calculus students.
Jobs in Computer and Mathematical Sciences to Grow Fastest of All Professions: A forecast for 2008 from the MAA said to originate with the Bureau of Labor Statistics
Online Mathematics Textbooks: A list of 65 online texbooks prepared by Professor George Cain of Georgia Tech.
MoWGLI: A project devoted to mathematics on the web having the goal of moving from "machine-readable" mathematics to "machine-understandable" mathematics.
What Can We Do About Journal Prices?: An article by John Baez.
New Wiki Book on LaTeX
Recommended web browser with native support for MathML:: Firefox, available for most platforms.
About the high cost of commercial mathematics journals:: Donald Knuth's October 2003 letter
What Linux can do for you: An October 2003 PDF slide show from Oxford University by Lou Burnard and Sebastian Rahtz of Oxford University Computing Services.
Orwellian Software Patent Threat in Europe: Software patents are basically patents on abstract concepts. They pose a threat to academic freedom. Do not confuse software patents with software copyrights (which usually are legitimate). Check out the section entited Take Action at The GNU Project site. Are you sure that your latest theorem does not encroach upon a patent?
"Just as interchangeable parts drove the Industrial Age, reusable information powers the Information Age.": XML first became a recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium on February 10, 1998. Read the article XML at Age 5 by Dave Hollander and C. M. Sperberg-McQueen.
From Egyptian fractions and platonic solids to Dynkin diagrams and non-abelian Hodge theory: A brilliant presentation, dated June 20, 2002, for week 182 of John Baez's expository series of postings titled “This Week's Finds”: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week182.html
The SGA Project Grothendieck's SGA is headed for arXiv.: Meanwhile graphic images of old pages are available from Harvard
The Modular Curve Theorem (née "The Modular Curve Conjecture"): An archive that I keep.
Cygwin: Cygwin, originally from Cygnus Software, now part of Redhat, purveyor of "Redhat Linux", can give a Windows user an intermediate step toward broader functionality at no cost in that it provides X11 (with mouse-capable remote login to Linux hosts), gcc, bash, and most GNU tools under Windows, as well as a Windows facility for building old friends such as PARI/gp from source.
One of the best posters seen in a while.: From the University's Theater Department, April, 1996.
Dept of Mathematics and Statistics, The University at Albany: This leads to The New York Journal of Mathematics, information about the Department, and information about mathematics and statistics.
University at Albany World Wide Web (WWW) Service: The central entrance for the University at Albany

Last change: 10-Jan-2009 | Department Web | Campus Email: hammond