 |
Dani NovakAssociate ProfessorMathematics
|
Born in Israel in 1949, I served in the Israeli army for three years, not counting the ten days I spent for losing a grenade on the Jordanian border. That confinement, however, has not been my worst ordeal. As a child of Holocaust survivors, I have struggled most of this life with depression. To escape the nightmares of history, I sought the sanctuary of pure mathematics, whose beauty and order have preserved my sanity . . . and, to a certain extent, my humanity. Thanks God, now that these phase of my life is behind me I turned my time and energy and am joining with others to share the beauty of Math with people from all backgrounds and all ages. Math is hard wired into our brain. It is a part and an expression of human consciousness that keeps unfolding for ever like music, poetry and other forms of art.
Growing up in Haifa, I would question my father, a former lawyer turned orange farmer, to quiz me on the mutliplication table. Elementary school, however, stifled this early enthusiasm for math education, which would not return until July 1983, when I began teaching in the Summer Computer Camp at Ithaca College. Since then, my love for math has grown exponentially.
For the past 25 years, I have taught mathematical art and other interdisciplinary courses in the Math Department. My colleague David Rosenthal and I co-designed a computer language called SeeLogo, which is used in many applications. from designing scientific graphics to teaching geometry, statistics, and calculus. But as a committed humanist, I most enjoy soul-to-soul communication with students. SeeLogo can be downloaded from www.ithaca.edu/seelogo It is an amazing language with little publicity. Lately I have encountered another wonderful tool for teaching and learning Math. It is called GeoGebra and one of my goals is to share it with others and to combine it with SeeLogo.
The other side of my life is the life of the spirit. Since I suffered so much mentally and emotionally I found divine sources within myself that gave me strength and direction. I know from experience that essentially we, all human being, are divine in essence. Our life is full of miracles but because of the forces and the deep ignorance of the environment most of us do not recognize it.
Link to my personal page
