Contact Jo Procter, college news directorDirect phone line: (413) 597-4279email: [email protected]
STILL WAITING FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Dec. 12, 2000--Anyone not satisfied with last year's millennial celebrations might take comfort from mathematician Frank Morgan of Williams College, who patiently insists that the new millennium arrives January 1, 2001.
"Finally, with a full 2000 years behind us, we'll be ready to start the next 100," says Morgan.
People might be heartened in knowing that the bewildering events of the past year belong to the old millennium about to pass away. According to Morgan, a fresh new millennium begins this January and the world could have saved some champagne and fireworks last year.
The mathematician gave fair notice to the world last year in the Congressional Quarterly's magazine, the CQ Researcher (Oct. 15, 1999), where he explained that 2000 years concludes Dec. 31, 2000 and the third millennium begins Jan. 1, 2001.
"Our calendar was established to make the year 1 A.D. the first year after Jesus' birth. Hence 2000 is the 2000th year; the last year of the second millennium, and 2001 begins the third millennium," Morgan says.
Morgan, who came to Williams College in 1987, has taught at MIT, Rice, Stanford, and Princeton. He was one of an international team of four mathematicians to prove recently the double bubble conjecture, by honing a new technique for analyzing the stability of competing shapes. He earned a S.B. in mathematics from MIT in 1974 and a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1977.
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