Person: Tapia, Richard Alfred

Richard Tapia is an American mathematician who worked in mathematical optimisation. He is known as a champion of diversity in US education.

It was an interest which Richard continued to enjoy and he went on to hold a drag racing world record in 1968.
Instead of going to the University of California, Tapia studied at Harbor Junior College in Wilmington, California.
The University of California at Los Angeles awarded Tapia an B.A. in 1961.
Tapia did not proceed immediately to graduate studies but first he was employed as a mathematician working on ship design at Todd Shipyards, San Pedro, California.
In 1970 Hamel versus Schauder dimension was published by Tapia in the American Mathematical Monthly.
It was in this year of 1970 that Tapia moved to Rice University in Houston, Texas, where he was promoted to associate professor two years later, and then to full professor in 1976.
Tapia has seen two different, but closely related, strands to his career.
Tapia has received many awards for his outstanding contributions.
In the same year he was honoured with the inauguration of the Blackwell-Tapia Lecture Series by Cornell University, Ithaca.

Born 25 March 1939, Santa Monica, California, USA.

View full biography at MacTutor

Origin Usa

Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0!

O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive