Curt Beck’s acceptance speech for the Pomerance Award in 2001

Behind anyone who receives the Pomerance award, there stand a number of invisible and nameless people who were essential in earning it. I am conscious of their presence. But those who have made it possible for me to hold this medal are rathermore numerous than usual, and they are also distinctly different from what you might expect.

This is the twentieth Pomerance Award, but it is the first time that it has been given for work done entirely at an independent undergraduate college, as opposed to a university or a research center.

So I must first acknowledge the confidence of the grant officers and the referees of a good many private and public foundations, but principally of the National Science Foundation, who gave me the absolutely essential financial support because they shared my conviction that our colleges are not only the breeding grounds that supply well-trained graduate students to our universities, but that they are also places where significant research can be and is being carried on.

And I share this award with Vassar College which over the course of forty-three years has given me the time, the equipment, and the students that have made my work possible. One person at Vassar has been too central to be nameless, and that is my colleague Edith Stout who has been my coequal partner for many years.

But most especially and remarkably, I share it with more than eighty undergraduate students who have worked with me over the years, often continuously for two or three years and in the summers in between. More than half of them have worked at a level of participation that has deservedly made them coauthors of many of our publications.

In the past the Pomerance award has occasionally been given to more than one recipient—once to as many as seven. It took a great many more than that to get the work done for which it is given to me, and it is on their behalf that I am proud to accept it.