James Huckaba and wife Bev react to tales of mathematics colleagues at Huckaba's retirement party. Friends from across the nation traveled to Columbia to honor the professor for his 32 years of teaching.
You invite his colleagues and son to lecture at a conference in his honor.
The department hosted a conference, Ideal Theoretic Methods in Commutative Algebra, in December 1999 to honor Professor James Huckaba on the occasion of his retirement. Professor Ira Papick spoke about Huckaba's work.
His student from infancy, son Sam Huckaba, AB '80, a professor at Florida State University, talked about his own current work on normal ideals in regular local rings. Other speakers included Huckaba's doctoral student Al Dixon and several colleagues from across the nation. The proceedings of this conference will be published by Marcel Dekker.
A native of Decatur, Ill., Huckaba joined the MU faculty after receiving his PhD in 1967 from the University of Iowa under the direction of H.T Muhly. Although Huckaba officially retired in September 1999, he continued to teach in fall semesters 1999 and 2000.
During his career, Huckaba wrote more than 25 papers and two books, Commutative Rings with Zero Divisors and Prufer Domains, which he wrote with Ira Papick and Marco Fontana.
An excellent teacher, Huckaba supervised six doctoral students: James Hays, 1971; Paul Froeschl III, 1974; George Hinkle, 1975; James Keller, 1978; Thomas Lucas, 1983; and Albert Dixon, 1987. He also supervised four master's students: David Slavit, 1988; Diane McHugh, 1990; Angela Lynar, 1992; and Robert Mann, 1993.
Huckaba regularly taught the undergraduate and graduate algebra sequences and, in recent years, developed a popular undergraduate number theory course. Because of Huckaba's guidance, the algebra group grew dramatically during his tenure at Mizzou.
"I've been quite happy with the growth of the algebra group over the years," he says. "There were only three algebraists when I came here in 1967, and today there are 10."
The celebration continued the second night of the conference with a retirement party that included a roast of the retiree. Attendees included Huckaba's wife, Bev; their three children, Sam, Andy (MU 1983) and Carol; granddaughter Maria (MU 2002); and Huckaba's sisters, Sharon Murray and Janice Wollerman.
For many years, the Huckaba and Papick families held annual pig roasts, so Ira and Ann-Marie Papick deemed it appropriate to give their friend a traditional send-off. Faculty members report that Huckaba, although a bit red in the face, survived the event.
