List of Clavius Mathematicians
Further details on members of the Clavius Group
A short history of the Clavius Group
The Clavius Mathematics Group is a team of about 30 mathematicians who spend four summer weeks together,
doing mathematical research while sharing work, prayer, and recreation. For the past 48 years they
have been meeting on college campuses such as Georgetown, Loyola, McGill, Notre Dame, Berkeley,
Holy Cross, Boston College, Princeton and Fairfield as well as at three research institutes:
The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the C.I.E.A. in Mexico,
and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in Bures-sur-Yvette, France.
The point of meeting in a university setting is to interact with the members of the
host mathematics department. About one-third of the members are religious; the lay
mathematicians attend with their families so that the number comes to about forty-five
during a given session. The overall attendance is variable, however, since other participating
colleagues attend. Although most members are from the United States, eight other countries are
represented: Italy, France, Brazil, Colombia, Canada, Spain, Dominican Republic and Germany.
All the mathematicians in the group are now, or have been, professors in a college or university.
Members of the Clavius Group specialize in Algebra, Algebraic Geometry, Algebraic Topology,
Graph Theory, Complex Analysis, Differential Geometry, Differential Topology, Foliations, Mathematics of Relativity,
Mathematical Logic, Noncommutative Rings, Number Theory, Partial Differential Equations and
Topology of Manifolds.
The Clavius Group was named for the sixteenth century German Jesuit
mathematician, Christopher Clavius, a friend of Galileo, who developed today's Gregorian calendar.
The group began in 1963 when two American Jesuit mathematicians decided to spend the summer
together at Georgetown University to discuss their professional work. Then other Jesuits and religious
joined them in the succeeding summers. By 1970, a charter approved by the U.S. Jesuit provincials
established the Jesuits of the Clavius Group as an inter-provincial summer community.
In 1972, three families were invited to join the group at their meeting in Mexico City.
Arriving for six weeks were three mathematical husbands, three non-mathematical wives, and eight
children ranging in age from three to thirteen.
Mathematics certainly got done, but many more dimensions were added to the group. Shared homilies
quickly became the norm at evening Mass, with children frequently expressing their opinions in the
dialogue homilies. The priests had to admit they had not heard the Old and New Testaments
interpreted in so many ways. A daily schedule of mathematical seminars followed in the evening by
Mass and a social hour soon evolved.
Over the next several years other clergy and laity joined, with the basic schedule of work, Mass,
and social hour remaining the same. Discussion groups formed on questions of theology, social action,
and communion. Baptisms, First Communions, marriage renewals, wedding anniversaries and ordination
jubilees have all been celebrated together.
The Clavius Group has taken seriously its obligation to bring the Good News to the professional
mathematics world and to the surrounding lay community. Thus Masses have been said at international
congresses and annual meetings of the American Mathematical Society as well as at small village
churches. In the summer, daily Mass is a sharing experience which is the centerpiece of the work
day or play-day for all of the group. Several times each summer the children, under guidance, have
planned readings and their own active parts in the liturgy of the Children's Mass.
Travel has become second nature to this group. Summer gatherings have been at institutes,
colleges, and universities in towns like Bures-sur-Yvette (France), Montreal, Berkeley, Mexico City,
Princeton, Worcester, Notre Dame, Boston, Fairfield, New Orleans and Washington. The traveling has
been valuable professionally and the children have benefited enormously in learning geography,
history, and local cultures.
Seminars start up where they left off the year before. In these lectures members
of the group or other mathematicians present their research work and collaborate in studying new
areas, ranging from new discoveries to classical theories of the last century. Clavius members'
research interests vary widely. Tom Banchoff's colorful computer animated films of four-dimensional
geometry have been applauded by general audiences around the world. Fr. Whitman and Ron Knill work
with Vatican Jesuit astrophysicist Fr. Bill Stoeger, SJ in striving to pierce the captivating
mysteries of the geometry of space-time.
Research by three other members on foliations - geometric structures like the leaves of a
twisted paperback book involves intriguing pictures but can be impenetrable to non-specialists.
Carlos Vasco is a consultant of the government of Colombia on the school
mathematics curriculum of that country. In Brazil, Fr. Paul Schweitzer, SJ, leads a research group
at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and serves as a consultant for the
Brazilian National Research Council.
Clavius Mass at the
Institute for Advanced Study
The original common bond of mathematics has endured, along with the equally important bond of a
shared faith community. Members really care about one another. They look forward to being greeted
by old friends as the summer begins, and, as it ends, they know that the group will remain in
touch throughout the year with newsletters and phone calls. What began with two people in 1963
has developed in a way that could never have been foreseen at that time. Like a family, the group
has experienced triumphs and disappointments. They have prayed, argued, and worked together.
Each summer the group is back and they pray that those common bonds that bind them will strengthen
and grow.
