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Dr. Broucke

Thu, 11 Feb 2010, 09:27 PM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

1. Why

My mother reached over from her chair and picked up one of the books on the table: Nonlinear Ordinary Differential Equations. I bought it the day before along with some other technical books at a used book store.

“Why do you need this?” she asked.

Not a bad question, actually. I’m a fifty year old man. My days of learning mathematics for profit are long behind me. If I didn’t pick it up then, it’s too late now, isn’t it? After all, it’s not like I’m going to start earning my keep by doing nonlinear systems research. I’m just a software guy building simulations. Why do I need a book like that?

“Good question, mom,” I said. “I just like the way they present the material.”

“Hmph. Present the material. It might as well be greek.”

2. Celestial Mechanics

Years ago I sat in a classroom studying Celestial Mechanics. It was a graduate course, and I took it at least three times, if I remember correctly. It was a small room just across the hall from my graduate student office. Taught by Roger Broucke, the course was a slightly different adventure each time.

As I opened that book the other day and surveyed what the first few chapters had to say, I was taken back to that time in that classroom with Dr. Broucke standing in front of the handful of us who were taking his class.

The same diagrams were there on the board. The same equations in his curly way of writing. His pants were dusty white where he would periodically clean his chalky hands. There was a sparkle in his eye as he uncovered those nonlinear mysteries for us, revealed in their mathematical beauty and their stunningly potent aesthetics.

Centers. Saddle. Linearization. Small parameters. Perturbations.

I never really mastered it all, but I do know now why I brought that book home from the store.

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