Rudy Horne facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Rudy Horne
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|---|---|
| Born |
Rudy Lee Horne
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| Education | Crete-Monee High School |
| Alma mater | University of Colorado Boulder (PhD) University of Oklahoma |
| Known for | Nonlinear optics Hidden Figures |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Morehouse College University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Florida State University California State University, East Bay |
| Thesis | Collision-Induced Timing Jitter and Four-Wave Mixing in Wavelength-Division Multiplexing Soliton Systems (2001) |
| Doctoral advisor | Mark J. Ablowitz |
Rudy Lee Horne (1968 – 2017) was an American mathematician and a professor of mathematics at Morehouse College. He studied special types of waves, including those found in light. He is also well-known for being the mathematics expert for the movie Hidden Figures.
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Who Was Rudy Horne?
Rudy Lee Horne was a talented mathematician. He was a professor at Morehouse College, a famous school in the United States. Dr. Horne was born in 1968 and passed away in 2017.
Early Life and School Days
Rudy Horne grew up in the south side of Chicago. He went to Crete-Monee High School. After high school, he studied at the University of Oklahoma. He earned two degrees there in 1991, one in mathematics and one in physics.
He continued his studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He earned a master's degree in physics in 1994. Then, he got another master's degree in mathematics in 1996. In 2001, he earned his PhD (a very high degree) in mathematics. His special research was about how light waves behave. He was the first African American to get a PhD from the Applied Mathematics department at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Rudy Horne's Career and Research
After finishing his studies, Dr. Horne worked at several universities. He taught at the California State University, East Bay. He also worked as a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In 2005, he joined Florida State University. Later, in 2010, he moved to Morehouse College. He became an associate professor of mathematics there in 2015. His research often focused on how light waves interact, which is a field called nonlinear optics.
Helping with the Movie Hidden Figures
Dr. Horne became famous for his work on the movie Hidden Figures. This film tells the true story of amazing African American women who worked as mathematicians at NASA. They helped launch astronauts into space.
Morehouse College suggested Dr. Horne to be the math expert for the movie. He worked closely with the film's director, Theodore Melfi. He made sure the actors understood the math they were talking about. For example, he taught them how to say "Euler's" correctly.
Teaching the Actors Math
Dr. Horne spent four months working with the movie studio, 20th Century Fox. He especially helped Taraji P. Henson, who played the main character, Katherine Johnson. He taught her how to solve math problems for her role. He even helped the actors feel excited about mathematics!
You can see his actual handwriting in the movie. It appears on screen when Katherine Johnson solves a math problem at the beginning of the film.
Sharing Math with Everyone
After the movie came out, Dr. Horne went on a tour called "Maths Fest." He talked about the math in Hidden Figures. He explained the calculations that helped astronaut John Glenn orbit Earth in 1962. He also appeared on NPR to discuss his work.
Rudy Horne's Legacy
Dr. Rudy Horne passed away on December 11, 2017. He was remembered as a "rock star" who inspired many Black students to study math.
The University of Colorado Boulder created a special award in his honor. It's called the Rudy Lee Horne Memorial Fellowship. In 2018, he received a special award for his lifetime achievements from the National Association of Mathematicians (NAM). He was also honored by Mathematically Gifted & Black during Black History Month in 2018.
