Alan C. Newell, Regents' Professor of Mathematics at the University of
Arizona, was born in Dublin on Guy Fawkes day in 1941. He currently
lives and enjoys the outdoor life in Tucson, Arizona, with his wife
Tish who deserves most of the credit for bringing up two sons, Jamie
and Matt, and two daughters, Shane and Pippa, each of whom makes their
parents very proud. Summers are spent on the most beautiful coastline
on earth in northwest Donegal.
He received degrees from Trinity College, Dublin in 1962 and from MIT
in 1966. He has chaired departments of Mathematics at Clarkson
University, at the University of Arizona and at the University of
Warwick, England, from 1971 until 2000, a period of almost thirty
years. He played his last game of rugby at age 58 and afterwards still
managed to lift his pint of Guinness unaided.
In addition to his research in optics and ocean waves and turbulence
and pattern formation, he loves literature and poetry and is an
unashamed wannabe story teller who gets great pleasure out of writing
yarns and plays with a twist.
