About
Prof. Bailyn graduated from Cooper Union with a B.M.E. degree in 1959 on the 100th anniversary of the college. For about a year and a half he worked at Sperry Gyroscope as an astronautical engineer specializing in lunar flight trajectory analysis. He then was admitted to the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU where he received the M.S. in Mathematics in 1961 and the Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1964. His dissertation, “Doubly Connected Minimal Surfaces”, written under Prof. Richard Courant as thesis advisor (his last student) was published in 1967 and received the Cooper Union Rossi award for excellence in professional writing.
Prof. Bailyn joined the Cooper Union Mathematics faculty in September of 1964. Having been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in Mathematics he spent the following year in Italy at the Tonnelli Institute in Pisa. Since that time he has taught Mathematics primarily in the School of Engineering but also in the School of Architecture and the School of Art. In the Engineering School in addition to the required Mathematics course sequence he has taught elective courses some of which he himself introduced and developed such as Differential Geometry, Calculus of Variations, Topology and Operations Research. For students in the School of Architecture he taught (and developed) Precalculus and Calculus. For students In the School of Art he teaches the special course Math in Art (since 1968.) This course is well attended also by Engineering and Architecture students. Prof. Bailyn and Prof. Arthur Corwin (of the School of Art- now retired) as codevelopers of this course received the Cooper Union Burdell award for creative synthesis of Science and Art.
Prof. Bailyn has also supervised many students in Independent Study mathematics courses. He has over the years served on many committees and has also served as Chairman of the Department of Mathematics for about 30 years. He cotaught with Prof. Jon LeMee of the Mechanical Engineering Dept. the course Theory of Constructals. He has received student awards for excellence in teaching.
Professional work outside of Cooper union includes computer related work (e.g., development of protocol/standards documents, maintaining systems, support software and training of employees), medical statistics (e.g., clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of certain medical treatments and testing the effectiveness of certain methods of training of doctors) and naval ship design analysis (determination of resonance frequencies.) He was also a draughtsman at Con Edison
Prof. Bailyn also developed and taught courses for NCNW (the National Council of Negro Women) and for the Cornell Statistics Department External ILR (International Labor Relations Program) at the Labor College of SUNY. He has also guest lectured at several colleges and grade schools (K-5) in the NYC area.
In his spare time he designed and built a vacation home in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts.