BOOK DONATION CEREMONY (May 23, 2006)

BOOK DONATION CEREMONY (May 23, 2006)

Universidad de Las Americas - Puebla

Buenas Dias & Bienvenidos a todos para esta muy especial ocaciones. Hoy, cuando mi Madre Aurellia Sobczyk sera donar los libros de mi Padre, Professor Dr. Andrew Sobczyk. Discupa, pero voy a hablar en Ingles si mi madre y Aurellia Sobczyk sera donar los libros de mi Padre, Professor Dr. Andrew Sobczyk. Discupa, pero voy a hablar en Ingles si mi madre y sobrina pueden entendir.

My Father, Andrew, was born in Duluth, Minnesota in May, 1915, to parents of Polish Heritage. My Grandfather, Stanley, was a shoe salesman, and my Granmother was a homemaker or housewife. Either my Grandmother Mary, or my Father's brother, Uncle Gene, told me that the boys used to come to their house to play. When asked which brother? "The one with the big head or the one who plays ball??"

My Father was excelled at mathematics and science from an early age. His high school principal said that he was the best student that he had ever had. He earned his Bachelors and Masters degree on Scholarship at Junior College and the University of Minnesota. He went on to earn his Ph.D. from Princeton, University when he was only 23 years old. I appreciated this accomplishment much more when I earned my Ph.D. from ASU when I was an old man of 27. In his thesis he proved the Extension of the Hahn Banach Theorem of linear functional to the complex case, which I learned as a graduate students many years later at ASU.

From an early age I always wondered what my Father did. I remember hearing when I was 12 years old, in 1955 that Albert Einstein had died. Who was Albert Einstein? My Father had known Einstein when he was a student at Princeton. During this time we were living in the closed, “secret city” Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs were developed.

Very early I became aware of my father's growing mathematical library. At every move and change of career path, the books had to be packed and hauled to the new location. By 1956 the book collection was big enough to break the rear axle of a Chevrolet 1952 pickup truck out side of Sante Fe, New Mexico, on our way Norman, Oklahoma, where my Father had accepted a position of Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oklahoma. As the years went by, the collection grew, and the more that I could help him carrying those books! I remember driving across the United States with a truck full of books, when my Father accepted the position of Professor of Mathematics at the University of Florida, where I graduated from high school in 1961.

My Father made it possible to establish a Ph.D. program at Clemson University, when he became Professor of Mathematics at Clemson University in 1965, when he was 50 years old. At Clemson University, in 1967, he organized a three-day conference on "Projections and Related Topics", which attracted many World renown participants in the field of functional analysis, the area of his Ph.D. thesis. My father published 22 papers and directed 6 Ph.D. students during the period 1965-1974 at Clemson, University.

During his later years, my Father's interest changed to combinatorics and later mathematical physics. My father published a total of 50 refereed publications. His hobies included Amateur Radio. (I remember as a child, my father talking to his brother (the one that played ball), by Ham radio (radio aficioniario) - and I also took up the hobbie, along with one of my brothers). He also took up a serious study of the Russian language, making hundreds of recordings of Russian language broadcasts on his short wave radio. I remember him saying that maybe, during his retirement, he would teach that language. But this was before the downfall of the Soviet Union. My Father died on cancer in November 7, 1981, at the age of 66.

So hear we are today, 25 years later. I am very happy that my dear Mother, Aurellia is here to open the Andrew Sobczyk Memorial Research Collection of more than a 1000 Mathematics books. For 25 years the books had been languishing in her old Six Mile house in the country, and later in her garage in Clemson. Fortunately, the books have found a new home at the Universidad de Las Americas, Puebla, thanks to the generosity of the American Mathematical Society, who has paid the full shipping cost, and thanks to my Mother, who decided not to sell the books to the highest bidder. Instead, the books have found their permanent home, where my Mother and the Sobczyk Family, hope that they will inspire more research in the areas of knowledge that were so dear to my Father's heart. Here, today, is also my niece (sobrina) Katie Sobczyk, daughter of my brother Stanley, also representing the Sobczyk family at this opening day in the new life of my father's collection at the Universidad de las Americas - PUebla.

My Mother and Katie will be visiting us here for one week. After visiting us here in Mexico, they will be going on a Worldwind tour to Croatia, formerly Yugoslavia.

Muchas gracias a la Biblioteca de La Universidad de Las Americas, y a Julia A. Ostrovskaya, y muchas gracias para assistencias de todas de Ustedes en este momento muy importante de mi y mi familia.