Joel in front of the Rogers Building (honoree
not related) on NYU-Poly's Brooklyn campus.

When asked recently what he was doing these days, Joel Rogers replied, “I’m fulfilling my lifelong dream.” A reply like that gets your attention. (Joel now says that this doesn't sound like him. It was at a family celebration, and maybe he'd had a little wine.)

The dream that Joel is fulfilling, or, anyway, what he is doing, is to focus on understanding various fundamental problems in his field of physics, specifically, some intuitions that he had in his early 20's. At that time, he told himself that if he had only 2 years to live, he knew what he would have to do to put together his half-formed thoughts so that they might be useful in the future. The mathematical tools that he would need to work them out with the necessary rigor did not exist, so that he would have to develop them himself.

If he is concentrating on these thoughts only now (he is 71), it is not because he put off, as he puts it, his need to learn more and develop his skill. Sometimes it seems, he says, that you have to wait for ideas to come and not force them. In the meantime he has found that the ordinary tasks of doing professional research are not unpleasant, and little discoveries are gratifying.

Whatever may be the thoughts he is focusing on now, Joel is among those mathematical physicists who categorize Einstein’s relativistic physics or mechanics as the most developed form of classical mechanics, the system of mathematical physics begun by Isaac Newton and contemporaries in the 17th century. A more abstract physics is needed, Joel believes.

Fortunately, Joel appears to be in exceptionally good physical shape. He encouraged a visitor to accompany him in climbing up the stairs instead of taking the elevator to his office on the third floor of the Rogers Building (no relation) on the Brooklyn campus of the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, or NYU-Poly (formerly Brooklyn Poly). He took the stairs two at a time. It helped that he is pretty tall.

Joel has been an associate professor at NYU Poly 1981, where he is a member of the mathematics department. From 1976 to 1981 he was a research mathematician at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, in Laurel, Maryland.

He is also a consultant in mathematics and research, and his clients have included the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center, then in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he worked as a mathematician from 1971 to 1976. He did research in hydrodynamics for the Navy’s Office of Naval Research from 1975 to 1981, and has been serving as a consultant to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.

A DVD issued by the Navy, Free Surface Hydrodynamics, Underwater Explosion, Cavitation, utilizes a generalized hydrodynamic model developed by Joel that did not achieve wide acceptance when he first propounded it, but, he says, it seems to work. While he was thinking it through, when he happened to look at a body of water (the Washington Channel, actually), he would look to see if the water was behaving as he had anticipated. Now, he says, he can stand on a beach and simply enjoy looking at the waves in the ocean.

Joel has been reading up in the professional literature in mathematical physics in order to avoid any duplication of work done by others. He reports that in the last six months he has made some progress in developing his ideas. He can't call anything he has done as yet a "theory", he says, not until he has some solid mathematical description. But he thinks he may at least have a consistent viewpoint that he believes could in time prove compelling.

While he has been thinking about this and reading the relevant literature, Joel has at the same time been following a busy schedule at NYU-Poly. He teaches partial differential equations and numerical methods. The professor is known for his hospitality during his office hours, when he offers his students a choice from a variety of teas and a bountiful supply of goodies.

The collection of candy is Joel's office started with the excess Halloween candy that he used to bring in. When it ran out, students would ask what had happened to it, and he realized he needed to bring in more. It makes for a very student-friendly office. On one wall there is a framed bubble-gum dispenser, with a glass front, that is a major attraction for children of visitors. Beside it he has hung some metal "Tavern Puzzles." He does best at puzzles, he says, after a glass of wine.

Some of the candy on offer in Joel’s office illustrates his knack for making friends. A friend in Hungary who had been a visiting professor at the Institute sent him a candy dish she had made herself, and it is filled with her favorite candies. A large silver-colored dish in the shape of a Hershey Kiss filled with chocolate Kisses was a recent gift from a woman he met in 1992 in Japan, where he had gone to give a paper at a conference.

Joel stocks his office at NYU-Poly with candy;
a large silver Hershey's Kisses dish was a gift.

He was touring Kyoto, the “Imperial City,” and was asked by a young Japanese woman, who was 19 at the time and a student, if he spoke English. Thus started a friendship that included a visit to her house, where her father honored Joel with a Japanese tea ceremony, and it continues, mostly long distance, to this day.

Another small bowl in the professor’s collection is stocked with Russian candies. His wife Tatyana (Tanya) was born in Russia. Joel has two sons and two daughters from his first marriage, which was dissolving at the time of his Japanese trip. One son and his wife have one girl and one boy. Joel’s other son and his wife have two daughters, and his two daughters and their spouses have one daughter each.

Joel met Tanya at a concert in Norfolk, Virginia, when he was a visiting faculty member during the summer at the NASA Langley Research Center, in Hampton, Virginia. Tanya will be taking her first trip back to Russia in the latter part of this month, when Joel is scheduled to give a talk at the Institute of Hydrodynamics in Novosibirsk (“New Siberia”).

Joel has a scientific view of the true nature of nature, but he likes, he says, “to look at other points of view.” This is fortunate, because his wife is interested in the various methods of healing displayed at the meetings of some followers of New Age philosophy, and Joel has accompanied her to some New Age events. At a New Age exposition, he noticed a woman sleeping fitfully and offered her his coat as a pillow. When it turned out that she had a migraine, he put his hand on her forehead, and she said that it gave her some relief. Now the woman is another friend, and she and her friends look upon Joel as a New Age healer.

The framed bubble-gum dispenser intrigues
children of visitors to Joel's office and it works.

Joel recommends getting to sleep at night by thinking of a mathematical problem. At least it works for him – unless he sees a solution. Then he lies awake. He can think about mathematics in any setting, Joel says, the noisier the better, and he listens to classical music all the time. He is setting up a music room in his house in Sound Beach, Long island, New York to house his collection of vinyl records of classical music (“about 10-feet-of-shelf-space worth”), along with music equipment and other music collections. He says he spent most of his time as an undergraduate at M.I.T. in the library listening to music as he worked. At M.I.T. he received his B.S. degree in physics in 1958 and his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1968.

Joel (full name: Joel Carle Whitehouse Rogers) was born in Rye, New York. His father, Joel Townsley Rogers, was a writer, best known for his book, The Red Right Hand, and author of numerous other mystery, science fiction and flying stories. His mother, Winifred Whitehouse Rogers, was an artist.

Asked about his family history, Joel recounts that his mother’s parents were included in New York society’s “Four Hundred,” a list of almost 400 people in New York fashionable society compiled in the late 1880’s by Ward McAllister, social mentor to Mrs. William Astor. (McAllister had estimated that only about 400 people would fit in Mrs. Astor’s ballroom.) After the death of his grandfather, however, Joel says, his grandmother was informed that an accounting partner of her husband’s had been robbing him for years, and his fortune was gone.

Joel’s own parents lost their house to foreclosure in the early 1940's. Joel says that his mother, looking back on that disaster later, said that it had resulted in her living a more interesting life.

Going further back in Joel’s family history, two ancestors on his mother’s side came over on the Mayflower. One of them, John Howland, who later married the other, Elizabeth Tillie, fell overboard during a storm, but was rescued. His near-death experience is depicted in a painting by a noted English maritime artist, Mike Haywood.

Going even further back, Joel’s ancestor John Rogers was the first English Protestant martyr to be executed by Mary I of England. He was burned at the stake in 1555. Going forward, Joel’s great-grandfather, Judge Noble Harvey Rogers, and his brother were Union officers in the Civil War, and Joel has their swords.

The whiteboard with mathematical equations
and a notice of a test dominates Joel's office.

Joel was one of five children, and the only one who demonstrated an interest in mathematics. He has a brother who is a writer, sculptor and painter. One of his three sisters, all now deceased, wrote poetry, drew, and was active in arts and crafts. His father, Joel says, never studied math beyond high school, but demonstrated an aptitude for numbers, and liked to develop methods for doing calculations in his head (something Joel strongly encourages).

Joel himself is known among his family and friends for making little jokes about numerical calculations about ordinary events. He and Tanya have been married "for over 14 years (5213 days to be precise)," and he enjoys confirming appointments with something like, “I look forward to seeing you in approximately 124.5 hours.”

When Joel was 12, an older sister gave him a book called “Math Made Easy,” and from this he learned first-year algebra. He got another book for second-year algebra. As a student at Woodrow Wilson High School, in Washington, D.C. he taught himself geometry and took tests instead of taking other math courses; the only math course he took in high school was trigonometry.

Joel was admitted to M.I.T. when he was 16. There he took a course in differential calculus and worked ahead by himself in integral calculus. Over the summer he read, and by the time he was a sophomore, he had completed all the undergraduate requirements in mathematics for a Bachelor’s degree in physics. He took graduate school courses in quantum field theory, before he entered graduate school at M.I.T. for his Ph.D. in mathematics.

Joel’s Curriculum Vitae lists professional recognition and awards, a selection of talks he was invited to give at international conferences, and selected reports and publications, in two-and-a-half pages, single-spaced, and it is 10 years behind.

Joel is a mathematical thinker. A picture, he says, not altogether seriously, may be worth a thousand words, but an equation is worth a thousand pictures.

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