So near and yet so far

As mentioned yesterday, thirty years ago I a teaching assistant in the Mathematics Department at the University of Maryland at College Park, MD. I had an office shared with 3 other TA's.  The department had an unusual number of math TA's (about 90), reflecting the fact that mathematics, at the lower levels at least, was a service provided to other departments (physics, chemistry, engineering, business).

In any case, my small windowless office was shared with 3 other guys.   The office next to mine was held by Dr Michael Brin, who worked in dynamic systems.

Unknown to me at the time, Dr Brin had an 11 year old son Sergey Brin, who followed in his father's footsteps, studying mathematics first at the University of Maryland and then Stanford, and then, co-founding Google with Larry Page.

Later, as his son became extremely wealthy, the Brin family created an endowed Brin Chair in the Mathematics department, and also funded five post-doctoral fellowships in dynamic systems, but as far as I can tell, Dr Brin himself has never had any of these honours, nor been head of the mathematics department. The last part is easiest to understand -- being head of a large department can leave you little time for research.

My own mathematical studies were in a different area.  I went to an introductory [to graduate students and faculty] talk Dr Brin gave near the end of my studies there.  I followed the discussion only up to a point.

So this is the story of how I knew, superficially at least, the Brin family.   At the time, I wondered if Michael Brin was related to David Brin, author of the scifi classic book The Postman [he's not].