Awards

Marshall Scholar - 1967

About Carl C. Cowen

Professor Carl Cowen received A.B. and M.S. degrees from Indiana University and in 1976 earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. He spent two years at the University of Illinois before joining the Purdue Mathematics Department as assistant professor in 1978. He was promoted to full professor in 1989 and in 1992 became Director of Purdue’s Actuarial Science Program. During his five years as director, Cowen increased engagement with the insurance industry, and the actuarial science program grew in size and strength. During his tenure as head of the Mathematics Department (1997-2002), the department received a National Science Foundation “Vertical Integration of Research and Education” (VIGRE) award and a Department of Education “Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need” (GAANN) award, which increased support for faculty and student research activities.

Throughout his university career, Cowen has been highly successful in the classroom while teaching a wide range of courses at all levels. In 1986 he received the School of Science Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award, and in 1997 was the winner of a Mathematical Association of America “Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics.” Cowen has directed 10 Ph.D. students in mathematics and has supervised numerous undergraduate research projects, many of them with support from NSF’s Research Experience for Undergraduates program.

Cowen is the author of numerous research papers and, with Barbara D. MacCluer, of the book Composition Operators on Spaces of Analytic Functions(CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1995). His research interests include operators on Hilbert space, analytic functions, matrix analysis, and recently he has begun research in mathematical neurobiology.

The School of Science at IUPUI currently has 1660 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in 30 degree programs and one certificate program. In addition to his new post there, Cowen will begin a two-year term as President of the Mathematical Association of America in January 2005.