Frank Morgan works in minimal surfaces and studies the behavior and structure of minimizers in various dimensions and settings. His three texts on Geometric Measure Theory: a Beginner's Guide 1995, Calculus Lite 1997, and Riemannian Geometry: a Beginner's Guide 1998, will soon be joined by The Math Chat Book 1999, based on his live call-in Math Chat TV show and Math Chat column, both available at www.maa.org.Morgan went to MIT and Princeton, where his thesis advisor, Fred Almgren, introduced him to minimal surfaces. He then taught for ten years at MIT, where he served for three years as Undergraduate Mathematics Chairman, received the Everett Moore Baker Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching, and held the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Chair. He spent leave years at Rice, Stanford, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the University of Granada. He served on the NSF Math Advisory Committee from 1987-90, on the AMS Council from 1994-97, and as chair of the Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference in 1997. In January, 1993, he received one of the first MAA national awards for distinguished teaching. In 1995 he represented mathematics research at the exhibition for Congress by the Coalition for National Science Funding. He received the Allen High School Distinguished Alumni Award and an honorary doctorate from Cedar Crest College. For 1997-98 he held the first Visiting Professorship for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University.
Morgan served at Williams as Mathematics Department Chair and founding director of an NSF undergraduate research project. Work of his undergraduate Geometry Group is featured in the 1994 AMS What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences. He is currently Dennis Meenan '54 Third Century Professor of Mathematics and the newly elected Second Vice-President of the Mathematical Association of America.
Nigel Boston grew up in England and attended Cambridge and Harvard. After a year in Paris and two in Berkeley, he went to the University of Illinois where he has been ever since, except for six months at the Newton Institute. His original work was in algebraic number theory and closely related to the work used to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. In recent years, he has moved towards engineering and now has joint appointments in the Coordinated Science Laboratory and Beckman Institute at UIUC, where he collaborates on topics such as coding theory, cryptography, image processing, and watermarking. He is a recent Sloan Fellow and University Scholar.