for those that KNEW--JOHN ROE;we just saw this from his wife

John Roe
7 hrs ·

News from John's wife, Liane Stevens Roe. John’s health deteriorated fairly rapidly over the last week, whether due to a recent bout of pneumonia or the progression of the underlying disease. On Monday evening, he called me over and wanted to pray with me. The gist of his prayer was that it looked like he was reaching the end of his life on earth, but he knew that for God's people, that didn't mean the end of life itself, but a new beginning. And he closed with thanking God that "in the last minute of our lives, you will not be any different to us than in all of the other minutes".

John died at 2 am this morning (March 9), at home with his family as he wished. I know that he would want to thank all of his friends and family who have loved and supported him so faithfully through this journey. We are planning a memorial service to celebrate John's remarkable life, which will probably be the week after Easter, on Saturday April 7th in State College, PA. John would think it appropriate for his time of remembrance to follow the celebration of Jesus' resurrection, which was so central to his life.

And he closed with thanking God that "in the last minute of our lives, you will not be any different to us than in all of the other minutes"

Jun 19, 2014 - 08:11pm PT
Attention youngsters: This gentleman is a well-known, top-ranked university research mathematician, which shows you don't have to necessarily "follow your dream" to the exclusion of other dimensions of life.

Good luck, John!

;>)

Jun 18, 2014 - 03:40pm PT
hey there... just learned about this thread, thanks Neebee.

I just joined the "climbers with cancer club", I am at Johns Hopkins for radiation (twice daily) and chemo (once a week). Two and a half more weeks of this and then a lot of careful follow-up - I think.

I haven't made it out west for climbing since 2012 which is the reason for my relative silence on this forum. I'd hoped to be back in the Valley this summer but things worked out otherwise.

Still, I've managed a little easy bouldering at Earthtreks (north Baltimore) in between one session in the radiation machine and the next.

thanks all! climb on!

John

Born 6th October 1959, I grew up in the English county of Shropshire, in a small village with a long name (in full, Ruyton-of-the-Eleven-Towns ). It is farming country, but my family trade seems to be teaching. I was fascinated by mathematics for as long as I can remember. I have a vivid memory of startling an elementary-school teacher by using logarithms (which my father had explained to me) to solve the multiplication homework that she had set.

I was fortunate enough to work with Michael Atiyah at Oxford, one of the great mathematicians of the postwar era, and I wrote a thesis on some generalizations of a famous result he and Iz Singer had proved in the 1960s. Atiyah encouraged me to spend time at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, CA, after my doctorate, so of course I went. I was very ignorant about the USA; I remember knowing that California was on one coast or the other, but not being quite sure which one.

My research work at Penn State has centered around coarse geometry and index theory, and I’ve also taught courses from Calculus I to graduate level. In 2006 I became head of Penn State’s mathematics department, a job I left in 2012. Outside of my professional life I am an enthusiastic but messy cook, a keen rock-climber, a guitarist, and a blogger on topics relating faith, mathematics and the environment.

Meanwhile, our Eli continued to struggle with depression and other mental health issues and these finally overwhelmed him just after his birthday, in January 2016. We had hardly begun to pick ourselves up from the pain of his loss before we learned that my cancer had returned and was now incurable. The last eighteen months have been a long process for Liane, Nathan and me – a process of learning to let go, a process which now seems to be approaching the end of my life. John and Liane are deeply grateful for the welcoming and supportive community we have found at State College Presbyterian Church; a community which also followed the example of Christ by welcoming and embracing Eli. If you pray, we deeply value your prayers at this time and hereafter.

Math for Sustainability
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Dear Colleague

This is to let you know that Mathematics for Sustainability is being prepared for production by Springer, and that I anticipate publication in late April or early May this year. I write now because I know that some of you are planning courses for Fall 2018 and have asked me about the availability of the book. It will be available! What’s more, Springer has a landing page for the book right now. Not every detail of the page is filled in yet, but you can request an online review copy of the book now, and I encourage you to do so if you are thinking about using Mathematics for Sustainability yourself or of recommending it to your college or department.

This picture shows coauthor Russ at the Joint Mathematics Meeting holding a “mock-up” copy of the book. I expect our final cover will be a little bit more colorful, but you can see that this book is full of content – in fact, there are 400 pages of mathematical content beginning with Units and Measurement and ending with Decision-Making and Ethics, followed by more than 100 pages of case studies and supporting material. It’s a big book but I believe it remains accessible to our target student group: those who took high school algebra and were not especially turned on by math, but find they need some credits of “quantitative reasoning” to finish their college degree. I have come to believe that these are students who we can and should serve better. We three authors offer this book as a contribution to that improved service,

I myself will very likely not be around to hear what use you make of Math for Sustainability. It is therefore with a sense of “passing on a legacy” that I write to tell you of its impending publication. I hope that the book will be a useful tool, making it possible for you and others to build courses and curricula that combine elementary, serious precalculus mathematics with the sustainability theme that can focus the passions of many students. I also dare to hope more: that reading and using Mathematics for Sustainability may become for you a source of hope and joy, as writing it has been for me and my coauthors Russ and Sara.

Yea, we all could use a little mercy now,
I know we don’t deserve it, but we need it anyhow.

He chose love over dogma which to me showed the truer essence of Christianity, despite his traditional background.