Arts and Culture

Even in 2000, African-Americans who are studying to be -- or already are -- mathematicians face a lonely proposition: only about one-quarter of 1 percent of all mathematicians in the United States are black. But many of them are finding a thriving community at the unique Web site created and maintained by a professor of mathematics at the University at Buffalo.

Despite the terror of "Jim Crow" and the backlash of white plantation owners, African Americans had managed to accumulate nearly 15 million acres of land by 1910. Today, that number has declined to less than 1 million acres. Although their numbers have decreased significantly, there are still a handful of black farmers who continue to hold onto their family farms.

Richard V. Lee, M.D., University at Buffalo professor of medicine, is editor of a special millennium issue of Annals of Internal Medicine devoted to various interrelationships between time and medicine. The issue was published Jan. 4, 2000.

David K. Anderson has donated to the University at Buffalo the internationally respected Anderson Gallery, with an estimated worth of up to $3 million, and has established a $2 million charitable remainder trust to assist with gallery maintenance and exhibitions. Anderson, whose previous donations to UB include support for the Center for the Arts and the donation of nearly 300 paintings, sculptures and prints with a value totaling more than $1.5 million, also plans to transfer to the university a substantial part of the Anderson Gallery permanent collection.

With an assist from the National Science Foundation, an assistant professor of media study at the University at Buffalo is launching a unique software game that addresses the lack of computer educational activities oriented toward girls, particularly those from underrepresented groups.

International critics have called Nicholas Isherwood the uncontested darling of contemporary musicians and one of the greatest interpreters of new music in the world today. The world-renowned performer joined the UB faculty in January as an assistant professor of singing and musical theater, teaching voice and running the Music Theatre Workshop.

One of his favorite pulp writers might describe George Kelley as "just one dirty guy doing a seedy job in a miserable world." But Kelley's life-long pursuit of cheap -- sometimes even cheesy -- paperbacks has the librarians at the University at Buffalo doing handsprings. That's because Kelley has made a gift to the UB Libraries of 25,000 pulp-fiction titles.

The University at Buffalo will establish a Center for the Americas as an interdisciplinary teaching and research center in the College of Arts and Sciences to expand the university's curriculum and degree options in the field of American studies.

New degree programs related to issues and research on the human aspects of information transfer are being developed by the School of Information Studies (SIS) at the University at Buffalo. The school was formed July 1 when the School of Information and Library Studies (SILS) changed its name and merged with the Department of Communication.

Gov. George E. Pataki was the guest of honor Oct. 26 at the grand-opening ceremonies of the University at Buffalo's Center for Computational Research, one of the nation's leading supercomputing centers.