William J. Knight
1305 N. Lawrence St.
South Bend, IN 46617
Home Phone: 574-287-5789
School Phone: 574-237-4295
Date of Birth: September 27, 1939
Place of Birth: Uvalde, Texas
I have lived in South Bend, Indiana, since 1977.
Family: I am married to Julia Knight, a mathematical logician who teaches in the Dept. of Mathematics at the University of Notre Dame. We have one son, who graduated from I.U. Bloomington in 1994 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. After living in New Mexico and doing landscape painting for a year and a half, he entered the Master of Fine Arts program at American University, Washington, D.C., and earned that degree in May 1998.
The following is a personal history that I contributed to a collection of such statements by members of the Uvalde High School class of 1957.
Before writing about myself, I'd like to express my gratitude to those of you who came to the 1998 UHS reunion. This was the first one I had ever attended. For me it involved a bus ride, plane flights, and a rental car drive -- over 13 hours in each direction. I was very happy (and relieved) to see that so many UHS graduates took the trouble to attend.
I wish I'd had more hours to talk with everyone. I was hardly able to do more than say hello to so many of you. I hope to have other chances. I'm also looking forward to reading your personal histories in this collection.
MARRIAGE: When I look back, it often seems to me that my life really began when I met Julia Frandsen of Logan, Utah, in 1965. We were graduate students in mathematics together at Univ. of California, Berkeley. We married in 1967.
CHILD: We have just one. Our son, John, was born in 1971. He is a landscape painter. In 1998 he finished his Master of Fine Arts degree at American U. in Washington, D.C. His ambition is to teach art at the college level.
GRANDCHILDREN: time will tell. There's hope in the form of a serious girl friend.
FURTHER SCHOOLING: I did my undergraduate work at Rice University. My Ph.D. is in applied mathematics from U. Calif, Berkeley. I also have a masters degree in statistics from Penn State and a masters degree in computer science from U. Illinois Urbana Champain.
CAREER: From 1962 to 1964 I taught mathematics at U. Nevada Las Vegas. After getting my doctorate, I taught at Penn State until 1977, when my wife got an offer to teach at U. Notre Dame. We moved to South Bend, Indiana, and I had a series of one-year appointments teaching math at Notre Dame, St. Mary's College, and Indiana U. South Bend (IUSB). After retraining (at age 45) into computer science, I obtained a permanent position teaching that subject at IUSB. Since 1993 I have chaired the computer science subdepartment. My wife is a professor of mathematics at Notre Dame.
HOBBIES: My job doesn't leave me much time for hobbies. When I can steal a little time, I play the piano (mostly classical). Spring and summer find me doing some gardening (more accurately described as "working in the yard"). Exercise is not a hobby, of course. With me (and my wife) it's more of a religion. I walk 4 miles a day and do calisthenics and weight lifting several times a week.
COMMUNITY: One pleasure associated with playing the piano is that it allows me to perform at a nursing home where my dad lived until his death in 1992. I go there and play a little classical stuff, some ragtime, and lots of old songs from the '20s and '30s.
TRAVEL: We haven't traveled for pleasure a great deal. Most of our travel has been to visit family (California, Utah, Texas) or to attend professional meetings (Scandinavia, Germany, England, Russia, Australia, Canada, and many parts of the U.S.). Our best vacation was 3 weeks in New Zealand over the 1995 Christmas holiday (their summer).
OTHER FAMILY: Those of you who knew my brother, Kenny, might want to learn that he makes his living as a singer and choir director. He lives in Sonoma County (wine country), California. My mother died in 1972. My father had a happy second marriage from 1977 to 1982. He died in 1992.