Tufts University - Jumbo Yearbook (Medford, MA)

Page 32 text:

Dawson G. Fulton Dr. Dawson G. Fulton is presently in his twenty-second year as a member of the Tufts Department of Mathematics. However, the path he followed in coming to Tufts was not a direct one. After studying for his Bachelor’s Degree at Acadia University in Nova Scotia and his Masters at the University of Michigan, Dr. Fulton received his Ph.D. from Michigan in 1932. Always partial to a career in teaching, he found what he could among the scarce positions available during the Depression years, and taught high school in Nova Scotia for four years. Despite his degree in mathematics, he was required to teach every subject including Latin and Social Studies. Somewhat disappointed with this arrange¬ ment, he now says “That should have settled me for teaching.” On New Year’s Day of 1937, however, he began a teaching fellow¬ ship at the LIniversity of Michigan which brought him back to the college level, and to teaching mathematics exclusively. After two years at Armour Institute in Chicago and four years at Ohio Northern University, Dr. Fulton went to the Uni¬ versity of New Hampshire in 1943 for an unexpectedly short stay. In the heat of the war years, large numbers of the New Hampshire students were taken by the draft, leaving U.N.H. with a surplus of faculty. However, at the same time at Tufts College, the opposite problem existed—a large num¬ ber of Navy personnel were being trained through the College, and there was a need for additions to its faculty. As Dr. Fulton expresses it, “I was loaned by the University of New Hampshire to Tufts in 1944,” but somehow he never made it back. He then became an associate professor at Tufts in 1946 and achieved his full professorship in 1950. Those who have taken his courses have all recognized his unusually strong desire to encourage students to learn. He is patient with his students, for as he points out, “It takes a little living with a limit to get a notion of what it is.” His desire is evident in every class he teaches, in his obvious pleasure when a student has understood a new idea and in the pain he seems to feel when he is disappointed by the class. Both these feelings derive from his “thrill of learning and know¬ ing,” an experience which he is constantly trying to communicate to his students. Dr. h ulton is sensitive to that which is beautiful in mathematics. He sees it as both art and science. “It’s beauty lies in its logical structure,” he says, “One thing follows from the next and every new notion is first backed up by an old one well-known.” I hus included in his feeling that logical sequence is a profit to everyone who takes mathematics is his feeling for the aesthetic value of mathematical logic. Dr. Fulton’s sensitivity and his love of teaching both extend beyond the classroom. He is keenly aware of natural beauty. In his walk to Bromfield-Pearson every morning from his home on Professors Row, he has noticed that “every season of the year is different and pretty.” Of the Tufts campus, he says, “There is so much beauty. It is a privilege to live and work in the midst of it.” Another privilege he has had for the past twenty years has been that of leading the Cub Scout group at his church. Only this past fall, many years after his own son had graduated from this group, did he relinquish this opportunity to guide and teach. Dr. Fulton has said that he “couldn’t want for a better place to teach,” and that he will “come up to the time of retirement with a great many regrets in leaving Tufts.” Perhaps those who will most regret his departure are those students who first en¬ countered mathematics at Tufts in the person of Dr. h ulton, a teacher who tries especially hard to instill in the beginning college student, his own love for mathe¬ matics. 26