Have you ever wondered what happened to your former professors? What do mathematicians do when they retire? If you're like Emeritus Professor Casper Goffman, you ease gradually into retirement and never stop doing mathematics.
Goffman came to Purdue in 1957. His research centered on classical real analysis and its extension to higher dimensions. In his work, he often confronted and analyzed the highly irregular functions which now play a central role in the study of chaotic dynamical systems. During his career he directed 23 doctoral students. He took sabbaticals at Princeton and London and lectured extensively throughout the United States and abroad, including lecture series in Italy, Taiwan, and the Peoples Republic of China. When he retired in 1978, a conference was held at Purdue in honor of his 65th birthday.
Although officially retired, Goffman has remained professionally active during the past 18 years. He taught part time in Purdue's mathematics department for six years and held post retirement visiting faculty appointments at the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of California, San Diego; and the University of Virginia. He also published three research books, and his work was the subject of a session of a 1982 AMS meeting.
Goffman's most recent publications include a note on total derivatives and partial derivatives and another entitled, "Porosity and Fourier Series," both of which appeared in Proc. AMS. Currently in process is a joint paper with Togo Nishiura, which is a simple proof of a theorem of von Neuman, Ulam, and Oxtoby. An advanced book on homeomorphisms, written with Nishiura and Daniel Waterman, has been accepted by AMS Publications.