Stephen Maurer
Stephen Maurer died August 25 from complications of Parkinson’s disease. He was 75.
Steve’s father, Ely, was a lawyer in the State Department, who played a role in restoring art looted by the Nazis to its rightful owners. Steve’s mother, Lucy, was at home when he was young, then served on the Montgomery County School Board in Maryland. She was appointed to the state legislature in 1969 (as a result of Spiro Agnew being chosen Vice President), and was elected Maryland state treasurer in 1987.
Steve was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland. He attended Swarthmore College, graduating with highest honors. He started grad school at Princeton University studying math, then left to teach the subject at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire during the Vietnam War. He returned to Princeton to finish his Ph.D. in 1972.
After a postdoc at the University of Waterloo in Canada, he returned to Princeton to teach math for five years, followed by 36 years at Swarthmore College, serving as department chair from 2004-2011.
He chaired the Mathematics Association of America committee on high school competitions for six years. His textbook, Discrete Algorithmic Mathematics, was published 1991, with two subsequent editions. For 17 years, he taught at MathPath, a camp for middle schoolers who loved math, serving five years as the executive director.
Steve and Fran Stier married in 1982. He wrote an equal division of family labor into their (non-traditionally Jewish) marriage contract, and lived up to it. When their sons were born in 1986 and 1989 (before the Family and Medical Leave Act), he was the first man on the faculty to take parental leave.
Steve loved squash (which he learned as a grad student at Princeton), trains, gardening, hiking (from the Outing Club at Exeter), and writing math and long annual letters (every year since 1973) about travel, work, and (one year) the cockroaches that infested his Swarthmore apartment.
Steve is survived by his wife, Fran; two sons, Leon (Eugenia Bragina) and Aaron (Alexandra); a granddaughter (Inga L’vovna Maurer); two brothers, Russell (Kathy Quinn) and Ed (Eileen); and two nieces and three nephews.
Funeral services were held on Sunday, August 29, at Congregation Ohev Shalom in Wallingford, with Shiva the same night.
Contributions in Steve’s memory may be made to MathPath.
