Ariel and
Me
Tara
and Me
Here is a (very) short autobiography
My full name is Nathanael Leedom Ackerman. I am the oldest son
of Joanne and Peter Ackerman. I have one brother, Elliot (two
years younger), and two cats (named Ariel and Tara). My
mom is a writer, and has published two books - No Marble
Angles, and Dark Path to the River. My dad is a
private investor, and has written one book - Strategic
Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the
Twentieth Century. This book has been turned
into a documentary film called A
Force More Powerful which was nominated for an Emmy for the best
documentary
in 2001 and which has two a sequel called Bringing Down a Dictator
and The Orange Revolution.
I was born on March 4, 1978 in New York. I moved to California
before I turned 1 year old where I lived in Westwood, a
suburb of Los Angles. I went to Montessori of West L.A. through the 4th
grade. I then went to U.E.S. (an elementary school run by
U.C.L.A.) until half way through 6 th grade when my family moved from
LA
(January 1990). We moved to London, England where we remained until I
graduated High School at the American School in London in
1995. While there I wrestled for 5 years and was salutatorian of my
graduating
class.
I then went to Harvard University where I
graduated Magna Cum Laude in
Mathematics in June 2000 and
wrestled for another 5 years. While
at Harvard I also volunteered with the Committee on Deaf Awareness for
4 years
and ran the program my senior year. My senior year I also started the
Harvard
Committee on the Blind which I was a director of for 3 years (and which
I helped
out with for several years afterwards). In addition for my last 7
years in Boston I volunteered at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter
(UniLu).
In September 2000 I became a doctoral student in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
under the guidance of my thesis advisor, professor Gerald Sacks
(who also was my senior thesis advisor at Harvard). In June 2006 I
graduated from MIT with a doctorate in mathematics. I received my
doctorate in June 2006. My thesis has two parts. The
first part constructs theories with small quantifier ranks whose
quantifier rank
spectrum is unbounded in an arbitrary ordinal (this is done by
modifying Robin
Knight's recent counter example to Vaught's conjecture). The second
part of
my dissertation proves a generalization of the Suslin-Kleene separation
in the
context of sheaves on a site.
In 1998 I became a
dual British and American citizen and began wrestling for Great
Britain. I have wrestled in 5 world championships, 6 European
Championships, the 2002
Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England (where I competed for
England) and the
2004 Olympic Games in Athens,
Greece. My
best result so far has been 16th in the 1999 world championships in
Ankra,
Turkey and a 9th place in the European Championships in 2005 (also in
Ankra,
Turkey).
From September 2006 through June 2009 I was the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania as a
post-doctoral lecturer. Also, while at UPenn I was the volunteer
assistant coach for the wrestling team during the 2008-2009
season. From September 2009 through December 2010I became a visiting scholar/assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
In January 2011 I moved back to Cambridge, MA at which point I became a visiting scholar/lecturer in the math department at Harvard (where I still am today). After I moved back I also competed in the 2011 world championships and 2012 European championships for Great Britain, after which I retired from senior level international competition.
You are welcome to visit my (Nate's) home page
or you can e-mail me at: webpage@n-l-a.net
This page was last modified on December 1, 2013