Welcome to my home page!
This page is supported by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois
My teaching career: I teach mathematics in the department of mathematics and computer science at Augustana College. I got my PhD from UCSD in 1981 under the supervision of Dr. Audrey Terras. My first (non-tenure track) job was at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Then I found a job at a branch campus of Penn State (Delaware County Campus, just south of Philadelphia) in 1984. After four years, I was supremely fortunate to find a teaching (not research!) job at Augustana. My tenure was effective in September of 1992. I became an associate professor September, 1994. I have gray hair, a gray beard, and wear glasses, and altogether look pretty geeky. I was named Earl H. Beling Chair of Mathematics in 2000. I was promoted to Professor effective September, 2002. The picture is from the spring of 2003 and was taken at a meeting of the Illinois section of the Mathematical Association of America.
Favorite courses to teach: Calculus I
The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus is the unifying idea for Calculus I.
PreCalculus
I've taken lots of the algebra out of this class and replaced it with geometric, numeric, and verbal reasoning. Many students who aren't very good at algebra can do well.
Courses for Fall 2003: MA 230 Discrete Mathematics
Maybe this will soon be my favorite course!
Other interests:
Over the last few years I have become interested in genealogy. My father's side of the family is from Sweden, and my mother's side is from Denmark. The Swenson Center for Swedish Immigration Research has its home at Augustana College, and they have been a great help. You can see some of my results if you would like.
In fact, I got so interested in the whole thing that I took a year of Swedish (tack!). One of the exchange sutdents from Sweden loaned me one of his math books, and I used it, along with a couple of other sources, to compile a list of Swedish math words. It's very primitive! Math words can be a great help in finding relationships between languages. Here's a mini-demonstration. Recently Olle Järnsförs of Sweden has been helping me, but I haven't yet posted his fantastic work.
Quick e-mail to Tom Bengtson
Some favorite math links:
Some favorite computer links:
- eWeek
- Linux Today
- InfoWorld Electric Page One
Here is (yet another!)
little GIF of part of the Mandelbrot set. Fractint version 18 took about 40 seconds to
compute this, centered at (-1.26107, 0.040017), with width about 0.0022 and height about
0.0017, and colors from their royal palette.
Date last modified:
August 8, 2003
Dr. Tom Bengtson
Augustana College
Rock Island, IL 61201-2296
mabengtson@augustana.edu