Carolina Alumni Review - March/April 2008

Creating a C A R O L I N ALEGACY

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Martha Anne McKnight creates the Ancel Clyde Mewborn
Professorship in Mathematics

Photos by Steve Exum

Ah…the stress-reducing properties of calculus. Yes, for a select few, rational numbers in fixed rows and columns can be very soothing—especially when you’re working 18-hour days on tours of duty in England, Bosnia and the Persian Gulf. Or when put in harm’s way. A pencil, a piece of paper and military psychiatrist Martha Anne McKnight ’ 77 transported herself from the harsh realities of global conflict back to a simpler, more peaceful time, to a Carolina mathematics professor whose support encouraged her excellence; whose advice furthered her achievement; and whose courses taught her that within chaos, reliable order can be found.

“It was more than home I recalled during these times,” McKnight said of her military service. “One of the things that helped me greatly during these hours … was my far less-than-perfect ability to recall matrix theory and calculus as Dr. Mewborn had so impressively taught.”

In honor of Professor Emeritus Ancel Mewborn and his significant contributions to her life, McKnight has made a bequest to establish the Ancel Clyde Mewborn Professorship in Mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences. The professorship will ensure that generations of Carolina students—including soldiers on the GI bill—will continue to benefit from Mewborn’s legacy as a brilliant teacher and warm, caring advisor. “My memories of his well-taught classes and his unmatched devotion to his students occurred over many continents,” McKnight said. “They kept my morale higher and my ability to practice medicine intact during quite desperate times.”

McKnight frequently rewrote her will: soldiers sent overseas are required to do so. But when her 52-year-old brother, the Honorable Brent McKnight—a Morehead and Rhodes scholar, graduate of Carolina’s School of Law and federal judge—died prematurely with cancer, she reconsidered the allocation of her assets. “After all you say, you want to do what you mean,” McKnight, now a civilian, said.“(The professorship) is quite simply a small way of expressing my gratitude to professor emeritus Mewborn and to the Department of Mathematics for his excellent teaching, his generosity and kindness and—most importantly—for the manner in which he has conducted his own life as an example worthy of repetition.”