Dr. Donald C. Pfaff

Dr. Don Pfaff received his A.B., M.A., and Ph.D degrees from U.C., Berkeley. On a good day, he also has 98.6 degrees from Fahrenheit. He has taught at UNR since 1961, and has loved, if not every minute of it, at least all but 17 days, 6 hours, and 22 minutes. He wrote Study Guides for two courses offered by the United States Armed Forces Institute, which went out of business shortly thereafter. He hopes it was not his fault. He has taught innumerable Institute classes for secondary school teachers, spoken at many conventions, and has published two research papers that you wouldn't even want to know the titles of.

He has also brightened the lives of hundreds of high school students by making up the Nevada State Prize Exam for the last 45 years, and more recently has published a book of problems and solutions. He taught Intermediate Algebra for ten years on television and has conducted workshops on Math Anxiety. In 1983, he hit it lucky and was presented with the UNR Distinguished Teacher Award. His picture is on permanent display, along with those of the other recipients, on the third floor of Morrill Hall. He's the one in the outrageous shirt. In 1997 he was presented with an award for distinguished teaching from The Northern California section of the Mathematical association of America.

Finally, his interests are pretty much like everyone else's: solving problems; collecting comic books; listening to classical music, Weird Al Yankovich, and Dr. Demento; talking about math; and watching reruns of Columbo, Laurel and Hardy, Babylon 5, Dragonball Z, Red Dwarf, and Monty Python.

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