Testimonios: Dr. Richard A. Tapia

Testimonios, a new publication from MAA/AMS, brings together first-person narratives from the vibrant, diverse, and complex Latinx and Hispanic mathematical community. Starting with childhood and family, the authors recount their own particular stories, highlighting their upbringing, education, and career paths. Testimonios seeks to inspire the next generation of Latinx and Hispanic mathematicians by featuring the stories of people like them, holding a mirror up to our own community.

The entire collection of 27 testimonios is available for purchase at the AMS Bookstore. MAA members can access a complimentary e-book in their Member Library. AMS members can access a complimentary e-book at the AMS Bookstore. Thanks to the MAA and AMS, we reproduce one chapter per month on Math Values to better understand and celebrate the diversity of our mathematical community with folks who are not MAA members.

My Story—Made in America ¹

Frankly, if you don’t know me, you may be wondering why you should care about my life or my work. In a nutshell, I have succeeded—against all odds—well beyond what anyone, including me, but excluding my wife and mother, ever would have dreamed. In 2017, the Houston Chronicle featured what they called the 36 most fascinating individuals in Houston. There I was, proudly next to Simone Biles ² and her four Olympic gold medals. I hold the highest academic position at Rice University—University Professor—only the sixth person to hold this position in the 100-year history of the university and of course, the first Hispanic. The Blackwell-Tapia Mathematics Conference and the Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference are named in my honor. I have received eight honorary doctorates from prestigious universities and given eight commencement addresses.

I was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. President Clinton presented me with the inaugural Presidential Award for Mentoring in 1996, and in 2011, President Obama honored me with the National Medal of Science, the highest award given by the U.S. government to an American scientist or engineer; in 2014, I won the prestigious Vannevar Bush Award from the National Science Board; in February of 2017, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) awarded me the Public Engagement in Science Award.

For all of these awards, I was the first U.S.-born Hispanic recipient. I say all this not to brag, but to convince you of my credibility. I marvel at what an individual can do in America. Yes, I have lived the American Dream, but it was without the apple pie. I call my life story “Made in America” because even though I have a Mexican heritage, I was molded in America and feel American.

I embrace the word Tejano, popularized by the late Selena,³ and closely identify with the Tejanos. After all, I have lived in Texas for half a century; however, I was born and raised in California, so I can never be accepted as a true Tejano. Hence, I am both an honorary Mexican and an honorary Tejano. I am proud to say that here I am in my early 80s and I consider the four papers that I have recently written in my late 70s the best papers of my entire career. That is the way we minorities are. We often start late (I got my PhD at age 30) and get better with age. I have always loved mathematics, and in return mathematics has been very good to me. It has given me wonderful opportunities and much satisfaction.

My Family

My parents Maria Magdalena Angulo (Magda) and Amado Bernal Tapia came as impoverished children from Mexico to Los Angeles seeking an education. Times were hard, as they had to support themselves and were not able to obtain the education that they sought. My mother came to Los Angeles alone, and lived with and was influenced by a Jewish family from the age of 12 to the age of 19, when she married. A similar story applies to my father, but in his case the family was Japanese. My mother went no further than middle school, my father finished high school. However, my parents’ educational dreams were fulfilled through their children. I have a twin brother, Bobby; a sister four years younger, Ana; a sister, Rebecca (Becky), who is seven years younger; and a brother, Steve, who is seventeen years younger.⁴ Out of five children, four of us have undergraduate degrees and three of us have graduate degrees. I am a product of these Mexican parents, the city of Los Angeles, and the time period of the 1960s. My father worked extremely long hours—often leaving the house for work before we got up and returning after we had gone to bed. They were hard working, good people who came here for better lives and they found them. They certainly gave as much to this country as they received from it.

Although my parents were so very proud of being Mexican—while their hearts probably remained in Mexico—they adapted well to the new world and definitely made it work for their children. My father was inclusive, and everyone loved him. To this day my wife Jean claims that he is one of the people she loved most. While not everyone loved my mother as much as they loved my father, everyone respected her. She was well focused and strongly directed. As I reflect on my mother’s teachings, I summarize them as: 1) Be proud; 2) Believe that you can (sí se puede); 3) Demonstrate good work habits; 4) Strive for global excellence.

School Days

In the winter of 1943, Bobby and I started kindergarten at Dayton Heights Elementary in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and not far from our house in central Los Angeles. We were well groomed, but our dress style was outdated and we looked different from our male classmates. Our teacher Marjorie seemed to be quite fond of Bobby and me, and we felt it. The experience was a pleasant one, as we mostly listened to stories and played games with the other kids. On the other hand, Mrs. Anson’s first-grade class was a different story. Bobby and I would not join in group singing or participate in any oral activities. We were extremely shy and much more comfortable speaking Spanish than speaking English, but the language of the class was 100% English. Mrs. Anson called our mother to ask if Bobby, the quieter of the two of us, had any speech problems. Of course, she said no and decided that we would start speaking English at home.

We moved to Torrance from central Los Angeles in the summer of 1946. While our house had a mailing address of Torrance, California, it was technically in the Los Angeles Strip, a narrow region that runs from Los Angeles to San Pedro. At the time, the Strip was not well developed and was heavily populated with so-called “Okies.”⁵ We started school in Torrance (actually in Carson) in September of 1946 at Carson Street Elementary. The next year we were zoned to Halldale Avenue Elementary School in Torrance. As I reflect, I remember good things about Halldale. Our fourth-grade teacher was Mrs. Bentwood. She was the best teacher in the world. Realizing that Bobby and I were shy, she tried hard to bring us out. We were the only Mexican-Americans in the class (school). Whenever in reading or social studies we would encounter a Spanish word, she would ask either me or Bobby to pronounce it correctly in front of the class. When we would do math, she would excuse me from the new material saying that I already knew it and she would have me tutor the students who were behind. She made us feel good about who we were, perhaps for the first time in school.

Bobby and I later went to Narbonne High School in Lomita, California for both middle school and high school. Due to crowded conditions, the middle school went in the afternoon and the high school in the morning. So, Bobby and I were free in the afternoons during our high school days. We spent all our afternoons and evenings working on cars, reading hot rod magazines, and listening to early 1950s music. Our passion was cars and drag racing. Bobby became a world-class driver and was elected to the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) driver Hall of Fame.

Narbonne was an extremely low-performing school, arguably the lowest in the district. In spite of my low-performing school, I did well academically, especially in mathematics, and was considered a star. Yet no one—no teacher, nor any counselor—ever suggested that I could or should attend college. Few students from Narbonne went to college. Low expectations have hurt so many potentially excellent minority students.

In eleventh grade, the American Mathematical Society promoted mathematics appreciation among local Los Angeles high schools by administering a mathematics test to each school. The schools with high participation rates would be acknowledged. During an assembly, Principal Barnett encouraged participation by saying that the individual with the best score at Narbonne High School would be acknowledged and given an award in an assembly in front of the entire school. This was exciting. I took first place. Mr. Barnett called me to his office and said, “Congratulations, here is your pin.” I immediately asked, “But what about the assembly?” He replied, “There will be no assembly.” This deeply hurt me. I was so much looking forward to shining in front of the entire school. To this day, I am confused as to why there was no assembly. I even entertained the ridiculous thought that it was because I was a rare Mexican-American in an “Okie” school.

Pursuing Higher Education

Since no one encouraged me to pursue higher education, after graduating from Narbonne in January of 1956 I went to work in a muffler factory. I was happy working in the hot sun next to an individual from Mississippi who told me “Richard, do not make my mistake. You are smart, go to college.” By the end of summer I could take no more and ran off to Harbor Junior College (HJC) in Wilmington, California in September of 1956.

I have fond memories of Professor Friedman’s calculus class at HJC. Several of my friends and I would sit in the last row. Every Friday we had a 20-point quiz. I would get 20 points, my neighbor would get 19 points, and the next neighbor would get 18 points, on down the line. Friedman explained the difference in scores by saying that the person that originated the answer got the most points, then the person who got it next would get second highest, et cetera.

During my time in junior college I met Jean, my future wife, on April 21, Easter Sunday, of 1957. She was 15, about to turn 16, and I had just turned 19. We dated extensively through the summer of ‘57 and in September, her mother sent her to New York to continue her ballet studies at New York City Ballet. In Christmas of 1957, a friend of mine and I, at the spur of the moment, decided to drive to New York to visit Jean. I got back late and missed an exam in Professor Friedman’s calculus class. Since I had never received a B in a math class, he said that he would give me an A in the course if I scored 100% on his final. There were five questions, I easily did four. But I did not know how to do the fifth. So, I thought and thought and finally came up with an approach. Friedman was not confident that the approach was correct and gave me no credit for that problem. I asked him to tell me what was wrong with my approach. After a day or two, he gave me full credit saying I had rediscovered an old theorem that was not well known.

Professor Friedman was perhaps the best math professor I have ever had; he told me to not go to a state school, but go to UCLA after junior college; so I did, in the Fall of 1958. At UCLA they told me that I could have been accepted with scholarship help if I had applied out of high school. No one ever told me that or even hinted at that. But there I was at UCLA, what a wonderful occurrence. I was a math star in high school and in junior college, but not at UCLA. I was just good enough. I survived by working hard for the first time in my life.

My path to graduate school was not certain or smooth. As an undergraduate math student at UCLA, I was an A-B student, but mostly B’s. I had no illusions of going to graduate school on the strength of this record. In my senior year, two of my classmates told me that they were applying to the UCLA Mathematics Department for graduate school. I knew that I had done better and had more mathematical talent than both of them, so I applied and was accepted.

But there was a problem. I had married as a sophomore and had a daughter as a junior, and Jean and I supported ourselves by working part-time. We were really broke. Moreover, I had taken out several student loans for my undergraduate education, forcing me to delay my acceptance and work for a year and a half. In that time, I worked for Todd Shipyards in San Pedro, California, on a grant from the United States Navy’s Bureau of Ships. The project consisted in using mathematics to define the surface of a ship. When the project finished in 1963, I returned to UCLA for graduate school. The Todd Shipyard experience reinforced my view that I needed a PhD in order to take a leading role in interesting projects. The time I was in graduate school at UCLA, from 1963 to 1968, was an exciting period in U.S. history, especially in California. The 1960s was my favorite decade and it was as wild and exciting as people say it was. Until this time, I knew that I was Mexican American, but at UCLA in graduate school, I became Chicano.

Of the nearly 300 graduate students in the UCLA Mathematics Department, I was the only domestic Latino. That did not really bother me because few Latinos attended my high school. When I started graduate school, there was one Black student. Naturally, we became friends, but he was a victim of the qualifying exams and had to leave UCLA. Classwork seemed fairly routine. I was not a star in class, but I was good enough.

For two years of graduate school, I had no financial support from the department, so Jean and I worked part-time, staggering our hours so one of us was always with our young daughter, Circee. I worked part-time as a supplemental (student) employee for IBM in Westwood Village near UCLA. And on weekends, I worked for my father at La Fleur nursery in South Gate, California as a salesperson. Jean worked as a PBX operator at Saint John’s hospital in Santa Monica and taught social dancing at Arthur Murray Dance Studios. In spite of all this work, we had a great social life and attended parties weekly. Often, we would stay up all night partying and then go directly to work the next morning after going to a coffee shop for breakfast. I would take naps on the fertilizer stacks at La Fleur nursery.

My twin brother Bobby joined me at IBM. Our boss at IBM was a very charismatic and smooth senior executive named Joe Mount. Joe had a PhD in math from UCLA. Putting great importance on the choice of advisor—and rightly so—he directed me towards choosing his former advisor, Professor C.B. Tompkins, as my advisor. Tompkins had been an excellent mathematician in his day; however, he gave me no guidance on choosing, researching, or writing a thesis. I was left alone to choose a problem, do all the research, and write the thesis. Tompkins did not even know what my problem was about. However, Dave Sánchez, a member of my doctoral committee, entered into the later stages of the process and guided me in rewriting my thesis, “A Generalization of Newton’s Method with an Application to the Euler-Lagrange Equation.” At one point, I told Professor Tompkins that I was making little research progress on my thesis because I was working too many hours outside of the university. So, he went to Professor Magnus Hestenes, the director of the Office of Naval Research-sponsored UCLA Institute for Numerical Analysis and was able to obtain a research assistantship for me. I then quickly finished my thesis, a respectable contribution to the math literature.

Struggles with Identity

Cover of SACNAS News. Photo courtesy of SACNAS (Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Native Americans in Science) sacnas.org.

As I grew up, I was often told by ignorant people “Mexican, go back to where you came from.” When I visited Mexico at the age of 13, I was told “Gringo, go home.” So my confusion led me to ask where do I belong, what is my identity? I am not a white American and I am not Mexican. At UCLA, in the mid 1960s, I would discover that my proper identity was being Chicano. That has served me well for my entire life. Soy Chicano! So the roles that I identify with and make me happy are: Chicano, Tejano, mathematician, and car enthusiast.

Put those four identities into one and you get something that looks like this image taken from the cover of SACNAS News.

When I was at UCLA there were foreign Latino graduate students and faculty, but we did not really understand each other. They did not understand me as a Chicano growing up in the United States and the resultant extra baggage. Until I met Professor David Sánchez, a 1960’s Chicano, I believed that to be a successful math graduate student or math faculty member you had to be from another country. Sánchez was an appropriate and excellent role model for me. He knew well the path that I had traveled. We quickly bonded, and he served as the mentor and role model that I needed, but did not know that I needed. Foreign Latino faculty could not serve that function for me.

The Spanish language, which plays the dominant role in defining us Latinos, can also play a role in dividing us. When I first meet a foreign Latino, they invariably speak to me in Spanish. I can see that this clearly strengthens our newly formed relationship. However, my experience has been that this bond will sooner or later be challenged by my lack of proficiency with the Spanish language. Yes, I have been intimidated by native Spanish speakers all my life; hence, how can they serve as role models for me? I say this, not to air personal grievances, but to explain the complicated Latino identity issues that may impact mentoring among Latinos. As Latinos, we are not all the same and here is why it matters: If you hire a foreign Latino as faculty and think that he or she will be able a priori to mentor well your domestic Latino, that may not be the case at all.

Recently, one of our Chicano graduate students, who was born and raised in Los Angeles, decided to attend a meeting for Latin American graduate students at Rice. He is not fluent in Spanish, but at the meeting they all spoke Spanish and made fun of him, calling him a “fake Mexican.” He said he made a big mistake and will never attend those meetings again. I completely understood him and shared his discomfort. To be an active member of the Chicano movement in the late 1960s you did not need to speak perfect Spanish. Maybe I take pride that my identity is formed, in part, by my deficiency in Spanish. Being Chicano asserts my identity. Being Latino does not carry the same impact because it is far too broad and weak a distinction. I have been scarred over this issue of fluency in Spanish. This makes me react in a defensive manner as if I have a chip on my shoulder, which I probably do.

Now, it is perhaps interesting to compare this impact that the Spanish language has on me with the impact that the language of mathematics has on me. If I walk into a room full of world-class mathematicians, I do not experience that same feeling of deficiency even though many of them will be far more proficient in the language of mathematics. But here I can stay quiet until we reach my area of expertise, where I can run with the world’s best and may even lead the race.

Minority students are more likely to be inspired by those with whom they identify. Some believe that I am unnecessarily picky, but can’t they see the importance of this? The experiences of URM ⁶ students place them in contact with non-URMs all the time. Although it would be unrealistic to assert that only URM faculty can be of value as mentors and guides for URM students, it is important to cultivate the mentorship pool to include mentors made from the same fabric as the URM students.

The Professoriate and More

David Sánchez was the only domestic Latino mathematics faculty member at UCLA when I was a graduate student and he was on my doctoral committee. Upon graduation, he asked me what I was going to do. I replied that I did not know and would probably take an industrial job. He said that I should try academia. I had never thought of that, but told him that it sounded exciting, so I would consider it. Sánchez and Lowell J. Paige, the chairman of the UCLA Mathematics Department, called Barkley Rosser, the Director of the Army Mathematics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin Madison and convinced him to offer me a postdoctoral position. When I received the offer, I told Jean, by now my wife of nine years, to pack up our belongings and our two children because we were going to Wisconsin.

Spending the next two years at The Mathematics Research Center (MRC) was the best decision I have ever made in terms of my professional career. I was no longer a student and had an opportunity to run with the big dogs: world-class mathematicians like Barkley Rosser, I.J. Schoenberg, and Michael Golomb. They treated me like a colleague; I was no longer a student and running with the best in the world. When I went on the job market after being at the MRC for two years, I had multiple excellent offers from Tier 1 Research Universities. Jean and I accepted a position at Rice University in Houston, Texas. I have to wonder how many of us URM mathematicians would rise to the top of our fields if we are given opportunities like I was given at the MRC.

I started at Rice in 1970 as an assistant professor. At Rice I just wanted to be a good professor in terms of research, teaching, and service to the department and the university. However, I soon saw that as an URM who had traveled that challenging road, I could be very effective in mentoring and working with both undergraduate and graduate URM Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) students. Moreover, there was a great need and there was no one who could step up to the plate. I immediately faced a critical decision that would challenge and plague me throughout my entire career. This is the delicate balance between professional activities, mainly research, that would be rewarded and outreach activity that would not be rewarded, but was so much needed. We young URM faculty had heard many alarming stories about minorities not being promoted for various reasons.

It became clear to me that I should get tenure before I start doing significant outreach, so I did. Nothing tests an individual’s survival skills better than figuring out the path to promotion with tenure and then following it. Too often, young faculty do not seem to possess or exercise the needed skills. I was really quite good at university survival. I received a promotion to associate professor with tenure in 1972, essentially in record time.

I always understood that you had to write many papers to secure tenure (they need not be great, but must be good enough to be published in good journals). You can write books and conduct high-risk, challenging, and truly important research after you gain tenure. As I reflect back, I probably advanced too early, but I made it, and it moved me even further towards the front of the bus. At times, I felt that I was driving the bus. Our chair suggested that I had such good visibility in the Rice community because I was an URM, and I had such good teaching evaluations because I had long hair. He may be right on the former point, but not on the latter point. I was now in a secure position to embrace giving back in terms of addressing underrepresentation. I can help because I have been there and I understand, and now I have tenure. The first thing that I did in terms of outreach was found the group Rice Association of Mexican-American Students (RAMAS) in 1972. In the photo below, you see our original group. We did have one woman in RAMAS, but she was absent for the picture. That was the gender balance in those days.

Molding of Leadership—Rice Days

The maids, the janitors, and the groundskeepers were almost exclusively Mexican at Rice. They were so proud to see one of their own at the faculty level and they showed it in their respect for me, the first Mexican-American faculty member. They could not speak English, so they were overjoyed that there was a faculty member with whom they could identify with, and that they could talk to in Spanish. In contrast to the foreign Latinos that I described earlier, my bond with these women was outstanding; they were my people. One day several maids came to my office saying that there was something important that they wanted to tell me—their boss, the director of buildings and grounds who was well-connected, was stealing from Rice. I asked these maids if they could have their immediate supervisor come and talk to me about this accusation. Mr. Cruz came and repeated the identical story. While I was trying to figure out what to do next, I was told by the maids that Mr. Cruz had been fired by the director of buildings and grounds. It seemed that he learned that Cruz had talked to me. At this time colleagues had shared with me that the German Department was trying to get rid of an excellent non-tenured young woman faculty member so that they could retain a not-so-excellent non-tenured male faculty member.

It was clear now that I must go to then Rice President Norman Hackerman with my two concerns. Hackerman was forceful, direct, and talking to him seemed like standing in front of an approaching Mack truck. Yet, he was a brilliant and well-recognized chemist and at the time he was the chair of the National Science Board. I decided to visit President Hackerman and relate my two concerns. My stories did not fall well with President Hackerman. He sternly told me that my stories could not be true and that I was an enemy of the university. I so clearly remember those words. I now realize this was a bold move, since I did not have tenure at the time, and furthermore, a few months before, I had a verbal confrontation with then Rice Provost Frank Vandiver at a general faculty meeting over some comments that he made in reference to minorities as faculty. About a week later, I was called back to the president’s office. He told me that the German Department issue had been taken care of, that Cruz would be reinstated with back pay, that the top boss had been fired, and that he was going to nominate me to the National Science Board. He did nominate me, but I was not elected because I was junior faculty, and members of the National Science Board are distinguished scientists and administrators. However, I was elected some 25 years later. I realized that this was Hackerman’s way of saying he respected my bold style.

Throughout my career I have been an active and visible leader at Rice. I was an active member of the undergraduate admission committee for six years. I was the chair of the Mathematical Sciences Department for five years, and I founded the President’s Lecture Series of Diverse Scholars. I directed the National Science Foundation sponsored Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professorate for more than ten years. I founded the Tapia Center for Excellence and Equity in Education. In addition, I was a good citizen, good teacher, and good researcher. I gave Rice excellent national visibility in many components.

Molding of Leadership—Beyond Rice

In 1968, the Chicano movement in Los Angeles and at UCLA was alive and strong. It was then and there that I found my identity. In 1972, New Mexico Medical School Professor Alonzo Atencio, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, called together a group of 17 young fresh science professionals to discuss the formation of an organization that eventually would be called Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). We were brown with some shades of red, all male because that was the way that science representation was at that time. We desperately needed the support of each other, for only we, certainly not our university colleagues, understood the challenge of dealing with the extra baggage that we, as underrepresented minorities growing up in this country, faced in our professional life. Chicano gave me an identity, and SACNAS gave me a family that supported that identity. Our first meeting, in 1973, consisted of 50 young professionals getting together in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Over the years our membership grew and at the 2019 SACNAS annual meeting more than 4,000, mostly brown undergraduate students, attended. The early SACNAS members became more than my professional family—they became my family.

As an applied mathematics professional, I also became actively involved early in my career in the applied mathematics organization Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). I attended its annual meetings, joined committees, gave talks, and served as conference organizer for several highly visible SIAM annual conferences and special conferences. My SACNAS and SIAM activities brought me nominations to prestigious committees, including the National Science Board, a Clinton presidential appointment. This visibility coupled with my research activity and well-recognized mentoring and direction of women and underrepresented minority students in turn led to prestigious awards, including selection to the National Academy of Engineering (first Latino ever) in 1992 and the National Medal of Science (only Latino ever) awarded by President Obama in 2011. This followed the creation of the David Blackwell–Richard Tapia Mathematics Conference in 2000 and the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference in 2002. By now I had become a well-recognized national STEM leader with far more than my share of prestigious awards.

Advice to Students and Mentors

It is said that what does not break you strengthens you. I surmise that I am not completely broken, but the personal tragedies of my dancer wife Jean battling multiple sclerosis for more than forty years, our daughter Circee’s accidental death, and our son Richard’s bouts with personal issues have caused me to live increasingly close to this boundary of being broken. I would trade my numerous awards and honors, and my wife Jean would suffer through multiple sclerosis again, to avoid the tragedy of losing our daughter Circee to an automobile accident. But we do not have that choice. Our only choice is to give up or play the hand that we were dealt. The choice is easy. Life has its strange twists.

When you encounter obstacles and adversity, learn to look both ways. Your challenge is to handle adversity. Prosperity is quite easy to handle. Realize that tragedy and failure are as much a part of life as are triumph and success. Failure is a part of every successful person’s life. You must learn to grow from your failures and to develop compassion and sensitivity from your tragedies. At each stage of your life and career, continue to dream and work to make your dreams come true. However, learn to cope and still enjoy life if they do not all come true.⁷

¹ Much of the material in this chapter had its origins in Dr. Tapia’s forthcoming book Losing the Precious Few: How America Fails to Educate Minorities in Science and Engineering, Arte Publico Press University of Houston.

² 2 Simone Biles is an American artistic gymnast and is the most decorated American gymnast.

³ Selena Quintanilla, regarded as the Queen of Tejano music, was a Mexican-American singer and songwriter.

⁴ Bobby passed away in April 2020. Ana passed away in 2009.

⁵ Okies refers to farm families displaced from Oklahoma and nearby states to California in the 1930s by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.

⁶ Acronym for “underrepresented minority.”

⁷ Part of this section is adapted from Dr. Tapia’s commencement address at Harvey Mudd College in May of 2017.

COMMUNITY, INCLUSIVITY, TESTIMONIOSAnnie PetittJune 15, 2023Dr. Richard A. Tapia, biography, maa books, Lathisms, latinx, story, Testimonios