trust that all is well. hope that you are enjoying the slowly emerging summer and some playoff basketball. in particular, i hope that you are taking the time to appreciate kobe’s nimble and mesmerizing footwork. here is a bit more of my notes from the inspiring program on african americans and mathematics, Aframath2009, held at boston university on april 25, 2009. after dean elmore’s welcome.the next speaker was don king of the department of mathematics at northeastern university in boston.. prof. king offered reflections on mathematics and culture. as an aside, i read an article in papers this morning on this issue by nicholas kristof entitled “rising above iq”. in the article mr. kristof argues that three racial/ethnic groups that have been unusually successful in america. these groups are asian-americans, jews and west indian blacks. he suggests that there may be some lessons lurking in the “cultural dna” of these groups for the rest of us. for a critique of assorted ethnic myths: the horatio alger theory of jewish success, the cultural explanation of jewish intellectualism and catholic anti-intellectualism, the cultural basis of black poverty and the ethnic explanation of the black west indian academic success one should read the ethnic myth, race, ethnicity and class in America, by stephen steinberg. at it’s core,however, prof. king’s presentation called for an investigation of some of these ideas. he began by drawing attention to george gheverghese joseph’s, “the crest of the peacock: non-european roots of mathematics. the title, taken from an indian source of the fifth pre christian century: “like the crest of a peacock, like the gem on the head of a snake, so is mathematics at the head of all knowledge.” in this book,joseph demonstrates that human beings everywhere have been capable of innovative and advanced mathematical thinking. he traces the history of mathematics from the ishango bone in central africa and the inca quipu of south america about 20,000 years ago to the dawn of modern mathematics. bringing this spirit to the present prof. king challenged the audience to think about the innovative and mathematical thinking that has been and continues to be a part of the black community. to this end he offered the following questions for consideration: (i) what role does the “traditional” black culture play in our work? (ii)what role does the “contemporary” black culture play in our work? (iii) how does our work fit into “traditional/contemporary” black culture?(iv)what role does it play in informing, shaping, influencing “traditional/contemporary” black culture? (v) how do we integrate contemporary culture in our work as mathematicians in 2009? these are difficult questions with no easy answers. he offered a few examples. the first was sylvester james gates jr. sylvester james gates, jr. has a number of “firsts” to his name. his doctoral dissertation at M.I.T. was the first ever at that university on supersymmetry. in 1994, he became the first recipient of the American Physical Society’s Edward A. Bouchet Award, given to a minority physicist who has made significant contributions to his field. and when in 1998 he was named the first john s. toll professor of physics at the university of maryland, he became the first african-american to hold an endowed chair in physics at a major U.S. research university. prof. gates has integrated adinkra symbols [it would be nice to see a few of these as tattoos.maybe i’d come to better appreciate the art. smile] to graphs used in string theory. his next example was prof. robert hampshire who has been using an online comic to bring some ideas in operations research to a different audience. check it out. the final example was irene smalls children’s author and story teller who has been introducing math themes in her books. kobe coronation preparations call. more to come. be well.