Professor James E. Sehnert died September 29, 1999. He was a member of the NKU Department of Mathematics and Computer Science for 29 years and a college-level teacher for 39 years. Jim was supported by colleagues in the few short weeks following his diagnosis with cancer in mid-August. He leaves no family other than the friends he worked with here during his career.
Known affectionately to his colleagues as “Duke”, Professor Sehnert was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but raised in Chicago and then Benton, Arkansas, before attending the University of Arkansas. He received a masters degree from Tulane University and moved on to Ohio State, where he completed his doctorate in 1971.
Professor Sehnert came to Northern in 1971 as one of the first faculty members in the department. Bart Braden came to the department as its first chair in the spring of 1971 and hired Duke that summer, joining Professors McKenney and Smith who were already on the faculty. Duke’s specialty was number theory which he continued to teach and enjoy, along with the related fields of graph theory and combinatorics, throughout his career.
Sehnert was the first sponsor of the department’s Mathematics Club, begun in the mid-1970’s. In that capacity, he began a departmental mathematics contest for middle school students, run by him with assistance from the club. That contest has continued successfully for more than 20 years. He continued to assist other competitions as an advisor and judge, and he played a major role in our own A.H. Pugh Freshman-Sophomore Mathematics Contest from its inception. Duke had wide-ranging interests besides mathematics, including music, reading, card games, spectator sports, and puzzles. He had learned to play the clarinet as a child, played in the marching band at Arkansas, and continued to entertain the department at its annual Christmas party. He was a voracious reader of numerous genres; a friend in the NKU library (and fellow card player) once humorously described his reading as either the most undiscerning or the most eclectic she had ever encountered. In his earlier years at NKU, Duke played occasional golf and poker, and serious bridge, at one point playing in duplicate tournaments with Professor Dietrich. In his latter years, Duke was a fixture working a variety of crossword puzzle types in the department faculty lounge in his free time, often luring colleagues into the fray. He enlivened many coffee room conversations with his recollections of characters encountered on late night radio; no fringe group was too far out to appeal to Duke’s all encompassing curiosity!
Dr. Sehnert taught a broad spectrum of courses, both service courses and offerings for majors. His style was unique and perhaps somewhat eccentric at times, but he made a lasting impression on many of our graduates. Twenty years later, one happily recalls results in a complex variables class being sung! Tom Kearns, Professor Sehnert’s chair for ten years, remembers Jim as being a most generous teacher and unselfish colleague, always available to students and often accepting last minute assignment changes that he easily accommodated due to his versatility as a mathematician. Duke's colleagues will miss him and remember his intelligence and ready wit, his ability to turn a phrase, his gentle spirit, and generosity. He once described his love of his subject, the theory of numbers, by saying that he was “content to forever graze in the pasture of the positive integers,” as we hope he is doing now. Generous to the end, Jim left his body to science. A significant bequest to the department will also help insure that he is fondly remembered for years to come.