Richard Tapia

I was sad to learn of the passing of Richard Tapia last weekend who was a great mathematician, educator, mentor, family man among other things. He was a great soul who I met about 12 years ago and changed my life. I am writing this to come to grips with my sadness at the loss and my good fortune for having known him.

I have only known Richard for 12 years, not long enough. I met him when I was a section editor for SIAM Review, and he was asking for guidance about some work he wanted to publish. I really liked the paper he forwarded about the isoperimetric problem, but I also Googled him because I always like to know about the authors. For those who are not aware of his professional accomplishments, Rice University posted a nice obituary. There are many amazing, heartfelt tributes from his former students and colleagues on social media as well. In addition to being celebrated as a mentor and scientist by two US presidents, he and his brother were drag racing champions, and he had a champion Chevelle show car as well. I wanted to invite him to give a mathematics colloquium and spend some time with the mathematics faculty. My colleague, Pam Cook, suggested that he might come for several days and spend time with faculty across campus. University of Delaware’s (UD) then-president Harker had created a Thought Leader series and Richard was invited to join that as well. Thus, Richard spent three days on campus, three wide ranging talks:

• For the upper leadership including the president, Patrick Harker, and provost, Domenico Grasso, as well as the full faculty: “Diversity Crisis in Higher Education: The Need for New Leadership and New Understanding”

• For the mathematics department faculty and students: “Inverse, Shifted Inverse, and Rayleigh Quotient Iteration as Newton’s Method”

• For a general audience: “Math at High Speed”

During the visit, he was tireless and selfless with his time, and I came to learn that he had a very direct but friendly way to discussing things. He met privately with the President and Provost. He also met with our nascent UD Advance team who were working on ways to bring more diversity to our STEM faculty. He met with undergraduates and graduate students. After a breathtaking three days on campus, he started conversations that continued for years after his visit. He helped change UD and made us better. He was a true thought leader.

In the years that followed, I became the department chair and then the dean of the Graduate College and vice provost for Graduate and Professional Education. I stayed in touch with him and sought his advice. Hiring practices changed. Faculty and staff worked hard to make programs and opportunities more inclusive. Eventually, my children grew to college age, and when my son chose to attend Rice University, I said to him, “There are many smart faculty and students at Rice University. But, there are only a small number of great souls on the planet, and one of them is at Rice. So, if you get a chance to take a class from him, you should.” And, he did and was better for it.

I don’t think I have a photograph of Richard to share, but I can share a few of the surprising lessons I learned from him in no particular order.

The work of diversity and inclusion is crucial to the well-being of our society. We need everyone to participate, and STEM fields are very large in the sense that there is room for broad participation. Similarly, there are many leadership roles in society, and so it is important to make these opportunities available to everyone. It’s hard to effectively lead any group if substantial numbers of people’s views and experiences are not represented.

Being friendly and kind can be enough to get started. When Richard spoke about the underrepresentation of Hispanic and Black people in STEM, my first thoughts were that it would be practically impossible to make progress in my department because the faculty was not very diverse. Richard disagreed with me. He said, “You’re a very friendly person. You listen to people, and there are others like you here. That’s what it takes to make people feel like they belong here.”

As a faculty member, think carefully about where you put your time and energy. In Richard’s book “Losing the Precious Few” he writes about the reward systems for faculty. No system is perfect, and you cannot expect any system to be your north star. Of course, you need to excel at research, teaching and service, but over-committing to a set of promotion guidelines can have unintended consequences. Though he does not say it directly, it’s clear he always worked at what was meaningful and impactful in his view rather that only listening to those around him. He could have done more research, but instead he helped with undergraduate admissions, and as a result, many students attended and succeeded at Rice that otherwise would not. He could have written more papers, but instead he provided rich STEM preparation experiences to K12 students. Though he was exceptional, he set an example for what a well-balanced, dedicated faculty member can accomplish.

At universities, we want to admit talent, but we end up settling for measurements of preparation. After all, higher education is all about developing talent and potential. Admissions is an imperfect system, but that does not mean we should not try to make it better. I forget who said it so succinctly, but the cognitive trap goes something like this: We end up valuing what we measure because we cannot measure what we value.

For faculty, both your students and your work are your legacy. It’s easy to overlook the people around us and focus on work outputs in the age of H-indices and publication counts. When we elevate and inspire students, even if it does not result in publishable work, we are building our future.

I’ll end with a passage from a recent email exchange we had.

“It is humbling to realize how much influence we caring professors can have on young people. In the other direction, most don’t realize what an impact that students can make on the professor.” - Richard Tapia 2026