HANOVER, NH — Richard E. Williamson (“Dick”) Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, died on March 8, 2019, at Kendal. Dick was born May 23, 1927, in Chicago, Illinois, the only child of Josephine (Hahn) and Richard E. Williamson. He was raised in Geneva, Illinois, and Brattleboro, Vermont.
After graduation from high school, Dick served in the U.S. Navy in Newfoundland where he worked as a mechanic. He earned his B.A. in Mathematics from Dartmouth in 1950 and his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955 where his thesis was Multiply Monotone Functions and their Laplace Transforms.
Dick returned to Hanover in 1956 where he taught mathematics at Dartmouth until his retirement in 1997. During this time he also had research positions at Harvard (1961), Stanford (1965) and Cornell (1970).
Professor Dana Williams, one of Dick’s colleagues writes:
Dick worked in mathematical analysis which is a natural outgrowth of calculus. Dick’s specialty involved integration which is an abstraction of the notion of area. Dick is well known for two highly regarded textbooks. The first, Calculus of Vector Valued Functions, was written in 1962 with his Dartmouth colleague Richard Crowell and Hale Trotter from Princeton. It covers the calculus of functions of several variables. This book went through several editions and was a standard in multivariable calculus courses through the early 70’s when it was replaced by Multivariable Calculus, by Dick and Hale together. It is still in print- in its fourth edition-and in use today. His second book, originally Introduction to Differential Equations: ODE, PDE, and Series, was written in 1985. Later editions are entitled Introduction to Differential Equations and Dynamical Systems and are also still in use today. Much of the success of Dick’s books is due to their being extremely well-written with clear connections to the mathematical underpinnings behind much of physics including electromagnetic theory, projectile motion, and optimization.
After Dick retired he continued to go to his office daily until his late eighties where his activities included updating the new editions of his textbooks. In 1997 he attended the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis; he continued to read in this area for many years.
Dick greatly enjoyed music, especially Bach. He studied flute with Ardell Bowers and Alex Ogle and enjoyed playing with the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra, at the Snell Barn, and with friends in a biweekly quintet at his house; he played in a trio with Professors Peter Bien (piano) and Allan Munck (cello) weekly until 2015.
In his younger years he was an avid mountain climber and loved being out of doors. After retirement he continued his active life, rowing and exercising regularly at the gym. His activities at his home in Norwich where he lived for over 60 years included splitting wood for the stove he had made himself, baking bread and making marmalade. He also enjoyed folk and contra-dancing, followed politics and loved telling jokes.
Dick was predeceased in 1996 by his longtime partner, Georganna Towne. He is survived by many friends.
Friends will gather for a Musical Remembrance on May4, 2019 @ 4:00 pm at 300 Kemeny Hall, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.
Gifts in his memory may be made to the Upper Valley Music Center, PO Box 826, Lebanon, NH 03766.
To leave a message of condolence please visit the online guestbook at www.rickerfuneralhome.com.