5 Questions with Royce Wolf

Royce Wolf, associate professor of mathematics, has been described by students as “thoughtful,” “super chill,” an “absolute legend,” and ”a really, genuinely nice person” … with a “bit of an odd sense of humor.”

While mathematics and subjects like virtual knot theory (VKT) are his professional passions, they are not his only ones. Wolf has long been an accomplished pianist and regularly holds public performances either solo or with guest performers.

In advance of his last performance, we managed to stop him for a few seconds to ask him a few pressing questions:

Which came first – your love of the piano or mathematics?

Wolf: Math was always easy for me, but I had to work at the piano. So, I would have to say Math came first.

Can you briefly explain what exactly a virtual knot is and why they matter?

Wolf: Knots are the physical, actual objects we are all familiar with. Any knot has an alpha-numeric code; given that code, one can reconstruct the knot.  These codes are of a certain type, but not all codes of this type correspond to knots. VKT studies these codes.

How would studying music benefit math and science students? And vice versa?

Wolf: Math skills helped me learn piano. Western Harmony is a mathematical system, and formal musical analysis always struck me as math, or as using the same thought processes as mathematics. It's a kind of combinatorics.

What is your favorite piece of music to play?

Wolf: Bartok’s 4th dance in Bulgarian rhythm.  Why? Just listen to it!   I'll play it Tuesday, Oct. 11, at 11!

Who are the Prairie Jewels, and what is your role with them?

Wolf: A dixie land band, currently inactive. I played keyboard.

Bonus question: Just because you seem like someone who’d know — when will time travel finally be possible?

Wolf: Time travel has always been with us. We all travel through time. The central question is "When will we learn to stop it?"