Saturday, April 11, 2015
As a contributor to the American Friends Service Committee, I came upon Dr. Ayoub's obituary through the AFSC "Sharing Principles" newsletter which featured an article on Christine Ayoub. Her last name caught my eye right away because I had Dr. Ayoub as a math professor in, I think, 1955-1956. I was in Engineering Science and as such, our chairman was successful in getting the best professors assigned to teach some our classes. What I remember about Dr. Ayoub so much was that we would bring him some of our physics problems and he was able to work them out.
I stayed at Penn State for a masters in Engineering Mechanics and went on to Purdue in Engineering Sciences to get a Ph.D. followed by a career with IBM. Dr. Ayoub showed how mathematics could make a difference in solving engineering problems.