Big Money...with Math!

The UCSD math department just won the jackpot! A gift of $1 million was awarded to the school and is to be split between the math department and another department (something to do with cancer, ya da...).

Graduate students' early excitement waned when the news released that the money was to go to establish an "endowed faculty chair." A few math grads may benefit from this, though, since the endowment would, in part, provide funding for the grad students under the faculty member who holds the chair appointment.

The San Diego Union-Tribune has referred to the late benefactor, Steve Warschawski, as the "founder of the mathematics department at UCSD." This rings a bit false, since one doesn't found a college without a math department, and one doesn't found a math department independent of a college. So what the U-T seems to have meant was that Warschawski was the first math professor at UCSD.

The gift was left by Warschawski's wife Ilse (apparently in her will), who gave it in honor of her husband.