Paul Sally

Sally was born in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts on January 29, 1933.^[5][6] He was a star basketball player at Boston College High School.^[4][6] He received his BS and MS degrees from Boston College in 1954 and 1956.^[7]

After a short career in Boston area high schools and at Boston College,^[8] he entered the first class of mathematics graduate students at Brandeis in 1957,^[4] and earned his PhD in 1965.^[5] During his graduate career he married Judith D. Sally and had three children in three years. David, the oldest, is a Visiting Associate Professor of Business Administration at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College,^[4][9] Stephen is a partner at White & Case^[10] (previously Ropes & Gray),^[4][11] and Paul, the youngest, is Superintendent at New Trier High School.^[4][12]

Sally was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1948.^[13] The condition resulted in his use of an eye patch and two prosthetic legs,^[14] which caused him to be widely referred to as "Professor Pirate," and "The Math Pirate" around the University of Chicago campus.^[6] He was known to detest cell phones in class and destroyed several over the years by inviting students to stomp on them or by throwing them out of a window.^[4]

Sally joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1965 and taught there until his death.^[4] He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1967–68, 1971–72, 1981–82, and 1983–84.^[15]

While at the IAS he collaborated with Joseph Shalika.^[16] In 1983, he became the first director of the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project, which is responsible for the Everyday Mathematics program (also called "Chicago math").^[4]

He founded Seminars for Elementary Specialists and Mathematics Educators (SESAME) in 1992.^[4] He co-founded the Young Scholars Program with Dr. Diane Herrmann in 1988, providing mathematical enrichment for gifted Chicago-area students in grades 7–12.^[4][17]

Sally died December 30, 2013, aged 80, from congestive heart failure, at the University of Chicago Hospital, and was buried at Maryhill Catholic Cemetery in Niles, Illinois.^[2][18][19]

• Amoco Foundation Award for Long-Term Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, 1995^[7][20]
• American Mathematical Society Distinguished Service Award, 2000^[21]
• One of the Deborah and Franklin Haimo Awards for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics of the Mathematical Association of America, 2002^[21]
• Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, 2012.^[22]

• Sally, P.J. Jr.; Shalika, J.A. (1968). "Characters of the discrete series of representations of SL(2) over a local field". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 61 (4). Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.: 1231–1237. Bibcode:1968PNAS...61.1231S. doi:10.1073/pnas.61.4.1231. PMC 225245. PMID 16591722.
• Sally, Judith (2003). Trimathlon: A Workout Beyond the School Curriculum. AK Peters, Ltd. ISBN 978-1-56881-184-0.
• Sally, Paul J. Jr.; Herrmann, Diane L. (2004). Number, Shape and Symmetry: an Introduction to Mathematics. Pacific Grove: Brooks Cole. ISBN 0-534-40539-8.
• Sally, Paul J. Jr.; Herrmann, Diane L. (2005). Number Theory and Geometry for College Students. Pacific Grove: Brooks Cole. ISBN 0-534-40536-3.
• Sally, Judith (2007). Roots to Research: A Vertical Development of Mathematical Problems. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society. ISBN 978-0-8218-4403-8.^[23]
• Sally, Paul J. Jr. (2008). Tools of the Trade: Introduction to Advanced Mathematics. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society. ISBN 978-0-8218-4634-6.
• Sally, Paul J. Jr. (2013). Fundamentals of Mathematical Analysis. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society. ISBN 978-0-8218-9141-4.