Ian Scheffler and Nathi Magubane, Penn Today
Visitors enter the virtual gallery through what appears to be a wormhole before arriving in a room where every wall is covered by psychedelic works of art—whorls of pink, yellow, and green in shapes like coiled springs, some of which vibrate and move when viewed from the right angle.
The art is both real and not real—a digital representation of an abstract concept—minted on the blockchain and hosted in an online, video-game-like platform by Robert Ghrist, the Andrea Mitchell University Professor of Mathematics and Electrical & Systems Engineering.
With appointments in both the School of Arts & Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Science, Ghrist’s penchant for combining seemingly disparate domains and interests extends to every part of his work.
According to Vidit Nanda, a professor of mathematics at Oxford and one of Ghrist’s many former postdoctoral fellows, Ghrist has “the soul of an artist trapped in the body of a scientist.” An aficionado of William Blake, Ghrist is equally at home discussing Dante, open-world video games, and the Hopf fibration, the abstract shape depicted in his virtual gallery.
Nanda says Ghrist’s distinctive combination of aesthetic flair—including his preference for wearing suits, even in sweltering Philadelphia summers—and mathematical rigor makes him a singular figure in the world of applied mathematics. “Every paper, every talk slide, every calculus video carries his unique signature, and you can immediately recognize his work,” says Nanda. “It’s like encountering a Van Gogh painting or a Bach fugue—you immediately know who made it.”
An unlikely mathematician
Growing up in suburban Ohio, Ghrist never pictured himself becoming a mathematician—the field felt impenetrable. “I was bored in school, trying to read math books that were way too advanced and just not getting it,” Ghrist recalls. “It wasn’t until I went to university that the world just opened up for me.”
He might have remained an engineer, if not for a particularly inspiring calculus professor at the University of Toledo. “He was your canonical weird mathematician,” says Ghrist. “But I just fell in love with the subject.”
Hardly anyone in Ghrist’s family had attended college, so pursuing a doctorate didn’t occur to him at first. “It just wasn’t the kind of thing someone like me would do.”
From equations to accolades
Today, Ghrist has received some of the most prestigious accolades in mathematics and science. Named a Presidential Early Career Scholar by President George W. Bush and one of the 50 most innovative researchers in the world by Scientific American, Ghrist has also been recognized by the Mathematical Association of America for the unusual clarity of his writing, with the Chauvenet Prize. He has authored dozens of papers and more than a half dozen books and has been awarded millions of dollars in grants to study applied mathematics in contexts as varied as networks and the analysis of public opinion.
Ghrist has been equally celebrated for his impact in the classroom. An inaugural faculty co-director of Penn First Plus, which supports first-generation students, Ghrist has received both the Lindback Award—Penn’s highest honor for teaching—and the S. Reid Warren Jr. Award, Penn Engineering’s highest teaching honor.
“Rob has an extraordinary gift for making the abstract not just accessible, but exhilarating,” says Tony Pantev, a professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics. “He shows students—especially those who may not have seen themselves as mathematicians—that mathematics is not a closed door, but an open world full of beauty, creativity, and possibility.”