After 45 years teaching at Duke, David Kraines will become emeritus at Duke this summer. Kraines attended Oberlin College and the University of California at Berkeley where he received his doctorate in 1965 under the supervision of Ed Spanier. After a two-year post-doc instructorship at MIT, he taught at Haverford College for three years and Aarhus Universitet in Denmark for one year before coming to Duke. He has taken sabbatical terms at the Institute for Advanced Study, the University of Minnesota, Cornell University, University of BritishColumbia, University of Michigan and UCSD.
Kraines has published papers in algebraic topology, computer-aided instruction, and game theory and served as Supervisor of Freshmen Instruction, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Associate Chair. He has supervised two Ph.D. theses and seven undergraduate Honors Theses.
In 1990, Kraines introduced the Problem Solving Seminar to help prepare students for the Putnam Mathematical Competition. That year, the Duke team finished second, the first time a team from Duke finished among the top 20. In all, Duke teams have finished first three times, second twice, third six times and ten other top ten rankings.
As part of the VIGRE grant from the NSF in 2000, Kraines organized the undergraduate research program PRUV that provided summer stipends for Duke students leading to a senior thesis and graduation with distinction. This program continues with funding from Trinity College. In the past 15 years, math majors have written over 100 honors theses with quite a few being published.
Although Kraines will have a major reduction in teaching and a total reduction in salary, he will continue to Segway regularly to his office and serve as faculty advisor of DUMU, director of the PRUV Fellows program, and coordinator of undergraduate math competitions. And he will continue to edit this Duke Math News for the foreseeable future.
Department of Mathematics
