On a bright spring afternoon, the University of Oklahoma Math Center is humming. Proactive but math-wary students drop in for help—often with a five credit-hour, lower-level course called “Mathematical Reasoning.” At one table, Colin Hieronimus leans in, working through a familiar problem alongside a determined freshman.  

This spring, Hieronimus earned an Outstanding Math Center Tutor Award from the David and Judy Proctor Department of Mathematics, and social media comments from peers praise him as “the GOAT.”  But his job is not about having every answer on demand. It is normal for him to consult another tutor, cite a textbook or steer a student to faculty office hours if the path forward is unclear. What matters, he says, is that they keep working on the problem. 

“Math is the purest, most distilled form of problem solving,” he says. “It forces you to grow as a thinker, but it’s really rewarding.”

Hieronimus, a National Merit Scholar from East Peoria, Ill., is a double major in mathematics and international studies. He is also a student whose education is helped along by a fund at the OU Foundation honoring world-famous geometer and Professor Emeritus Nathan Altshiller Court. The two men are separated by nearly a century, but the way Hieronimus approaches his job in the Math Center likely would have made Court smile.  

Court arrived in New York in 1911 knowing five languages (Russian, Polish, Hebrew, French and German), but not yet English. Within about six months he was teaching evening classes at Columbia University while doing graduate work in mathematics and astronomy there during the day. He joined OU’s fledgling math department in 1916.

To describe the Warsaw native as a fast learner would be inadequate. “He was simply, exceptionally brilliant,” says his granddaughter, former Colorado state senator Lois Court of Denver.

Brilliance, in his case, did not look flashy. Former OU President Joseph A. Brandt wrote a message to be delivered at Court’s memorial service, observing that “his fame spread abroad faster than at home, because he was a modest, unboastful man.” 

Court’s great-nephew, retired physics instructor Arthur Altshiller, OU BS ‘63 physics, spent decades teaching and now lives in West Hills, Calif. He explains how his relative was known in academic circles: “His forte was synthetic geometry, which is an exercise in logic and consistency. Any math professor of my generation knew of Nathan’s accomplishments.” 

When Court first published College Geometry in 1925 while teaching at OU, the subject he loved barely existed in American college curricula. By the time the second edition was published in 1952, geometry had a firm footing in colleges across the country, including technical schools.  

Court took the opportunity not just to update content in the second edition, but to sharpen how students learned to think. He addressed the emotional reality of learning with a broadly applicable philosophy in the textbook’s introduction:

“A number of unsuccessful starts is not unusual, and need not cause discouragement. The successful solver of problems is the one whose determination—whose will to overcome obstacles—grows and increases with the resistance encountered. Then, after the light breaks through, and the goal has been reached, his is the reward of a gratifying sense of triumph, of achievement.”  

Hieronimus knows that arc of frustration and breakthrough well, and he witnesses it regularly when a concept finally clicks for a student in the Math Center. “Working on a math problem is often really frustrating,” he says. “But once you do figure something out … it is joyous.”

Hieronimus chose OU because of its strong financial support. Scholarships designated for students in the Department of Mathematics bridge the gap to cover his cost of living, he says—including the Court scholarship. 

Court’s son, Arnold—a meteorologist, Antarctic researcher and OU 1934 alum—donated his father’s papers to OU following the beloved professor’s 1968 death, including handwritten lectures, manuscripts and stacks of fan mail from around the world. He also established the scholarship in his father’s name supported by colleagues, family and friends. The earnings of the endowed fund allow for the recognition of outstanding freshman or sophomore students majoring in mathematics.

That scholarship permits Hieronimus time to explore two fields he loves and is helping him to earn a credential he believes will serve him in whatever comes next.

“A math degree is proof that you can think critically, creatively and logically to solve problems,” he says. Those thinking skills, Hieronimus believes, are harder to teach than the technical details of any given job.

Decades after Court’s passing, his determination still shows up in the Math Center, where students wrestle with hard ideas and learn not to give up. Each time a concept finally clicks in that room, the distance between Nathan Altshiller Court and the students who see his name narrows just a little. 

Sara Morrell Cowan is assistant editor of Sooner Magazine.