Richard H. Crowell *55

Richard H. Crowell, emeritus professor of mathematics at Dartmouth College, died Aug. 5, 2006, of Parkinson’s disease. He was 78, and was a longtime resident of Hanover.

After graduating from Harvard in 1949, he was a teaching fellow there in physics for the following year. He then did graduate work at Princeton under Professor Ralph Fox *39, one of the founders of modern knot theory, a branch of mathematics inspired by observation of common knots. By 1955, he received his doctorate in mathematics, and then was a lecturer at MIT before joining the Dartmouth faculty in 1958.

Crowell published many important research papers, but probably is best known for his book, An Introduction to Knot Theory, co-authored with Professor Fox and published in 1963.

He is credited with putting as much effort into teaching as he did into his research, regularly conducting a large class in calculus and even writing a calculus textbook. He was often invited to lecture at other schools. Dartmouth’s mathematics department is viewed as having been significantly strengthened under his chairmanship from 1973 to 1979, and then again from 1986 to 1989.

He is survived by his wife, Marilyn, and two sons.