Shawn Henfling introduces us to John Urschel: Math Genius, Chess Player and Professional Athlete
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We are a society that loves our generalizations and stereotypes. We want so badly to make everything fit into a neat little box so that we can categorize it, tag it, wrap it in a bow and stash it away on the shelf for later. Want proof? Discrimination of every kind based upon preconceived notions of race, gender, religion, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation and age runs deep within our cultural norms. We live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance. We know these broad generalizations have the potential to be harmful and are usually wrong. Despite our best efforts, we still internalize these prejudices. Right now, you are probably thinking to yourself, “This is just another holier than thou writer preaching to me about how to overcome my own preconceived notions to be a better person.” Nah. Not exactly.
“I play because I love the game. I love hitting people.” John Urschel said that in The Players Tribune in an essay he wrote about why, despite all evidence saying he shouldn’t, he still plays football professionally. Sounds like something the stereotypical stupid jock might say. Does he fit the profile of stereotypical jock? John is a Center for the Baltimore Ravens in the NFL. He plays in the trenches, along the line where the most contact happens. On every play he throws his 6’3”, 308 pound body around slamming into his designated defensive lineman. So far so good right?
Here’s a guy that blows up every stereotype and myth we hold dear about professional athletes.
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Lets take it a step further. John is also published in both The Journal of Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy and The Journal of Computational Mathematics. Whoa. Wait just a minute here. Something isn’t quite lining up. Need more? He also graduated from Penn State with both a Bachelors degree and Masters degree in Mathematics. His GPA? A perfect 4.0. While still in school, he played football, taught undergraduate classes, and published his first article, “Instabilities of the Sun-Jupiter-Asteroid Three Body Problem.” I’m a pretty smart guy and the content is way over my head. I couldn’t so much as get through the first few paragraphs. John isn’t just pretty smart. He happens to be a brilliant scholar and a professional football player.
Don’t believe me? Try to follow along with just the abstract from the paper I referenced above:
We consider dynamics of a Sun-Jupiter-Asteroid system, and, under
some simplifying assumptions, show the existence of instabilities in the motions of
an asteroid. In particular, we show that an asteroid whose initial orbit is far from
that of the orbit of Mars can be gradually perturbed into one that crosses Mars’
orbit.
Properly formulated, the motions of the asteroid can be described as a Hamiltonian
system with two degrees of freedom, with the dynamics restricted to a
“large” open region of the phase space reduced to an exact area preserving map.
Instabilities arise in regions where the map has no invariant curves. The method
of MacKay and Percival is used to explicitly rule out the existence of these curves,
and results of Mather abstractly guarantee the existence of diusing orbits. We
emphasize that fi nding such diffusing orbits numerically is quite diffcult, and is
outside the scope of this paper.
Here’s a guy that blows up every stereotype and myth we hold dear about professional athletes. He’s smart, wealthy, well read, and wants to be a chess champion. He drives a used car and puts most of his money in the bank. John is smart enough to make a very comfortable living using his brain. Instead, he plays a dangerous game with potentially lethal consequences. Every Sunday in fall he takes the chance that he could suffer neurological damage, physical deformity and even death. Still he suits up, gets down into his stance and waits for the opposing lineman to charge directly into him. Why? For the same reason people skydive, ride motorcycles, go rock climbing or race cars. “I’ve fallen in love with the sport of football and the physical contact associated with it.” He does it because he loves it and that should be enough. So yes, John Urschel is a math genius, chess player and professional athlete.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/ravens/bs-sp-ravens-john-urschel-0713-20140712-story.html#page=1
http://www.theplayerstribune.com/why-i-play-football/
http://www.personal.psu.edu/jcu5018/3BP_preprint.pdf
http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.0565
Photo Credit: Penn State/flickr