About me.

Hi, I’m Professor Dresden. I’ve been teaching at W&L for 30 years, and I’ve taught everything from calculus to cryptography to continued fractions. I often do summer research with students, I occasionally teach some independent study classes, I’ve won a national math award (the Pólya in 2026, and honorable mention for the Azarian in 2025), and when I’m not in the office I can sometimes be found in Shenandoah National Park with my wife and two children. Before W&L, I spent many years in school, at Stanford, Wisconsin, and Texas.

Old-school teaching.

Despite the occasional use of computers, my teaching is actually pretty old-school. I mainly use the chalkboard, which leads to some wonderful (hand-drawn) mathematical displays. My students saw a lot of this in my real analysis class, where I gave detailed presentations like this one on uniform convergence:

… but don’t worry, that’s just what the chalkboard looks like at the end of class.

Math information (graduate schools, careers in math, and so on).

• Be sure to check out the many professional math societies here in the US!
  • There’s the MAA (Mathematical Association of America) web pages, with a great careers page (perfect for students).
  • Likewise, the AMS (American Mathematical Society) also has a nice student page. Note that the AMS and the MAA have a great deal of overlap in terms of services and membership. but the AMS is a bit more research-oriented and the MAA is a bit more teaching-oriented.
  • The NAM (National Association of Mathematicians) is dedicated to supporting underrepresented minorities in math. My colleague Cory Colbert is the Treasurer of the NAM!
  • The AWM (Association for Women in Mathematics) is focused on supporting women and girls in math.
  • SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) is more focused on applied math. And yes, they have a student page as well!
• The online magazine Quanta has many thoughtful general-interest articles on mathematics. So also does Nautilus, including this neat story on near-miss mathematics.
• The most inspiring math talk (without a single equation!) I’ve ever seen is Francis Su’s The Lesson of Grace in Teaching (link goes to the speech text, which links to the video). It’s so moving that audience members were literally crying during his speech (as was Francis himself).

Favorite charities.

• Charcot-Marie-Tooth Association, for people with this genetic disease of the peripheral nervous system.
• American Red Cross. A family member needed a blood transfusion during a recent surgery; thank goodness for the ARC and the many anonymous donors.
• National Kidney Foundation, for people with kidney disease.
• ACLU, because civil rights are civil rights.

And here’s a bit more. The cause that is nearest and dearest to my heart is organ donation. I have some details about my 2018 kidney donation on my advice page (scroll to the bottom), and also you can go directly to kidney.org, to bethematch.org, and to organdonor.gov. Or, you can just ask me about it. You can save someone’s life.