Tim Hsu

		Tim Hsu
(Spring 2017)				(by Hazel Hsu at age 6)

Hi. I'm a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at San José State University. Welcome to my homepage at www.timhsu.net!

This semester (Spring 2025), I'm on sabbatical. I'm still reading email, and occasionally replying, but if it's not urgent, it might take longer than usual for me to get back to you.

You may have also come here looking for:

If you found this page while looking for something along the lines of:

http://www.math.sjsu.edu/~hsu/FOO

Then try the following URL:

http://www.timhsu.net/FOO

If I have everything set up correctly, that page should have exactly the same content as what you were looking for. If not, try varying upper and lower case in FOO; my new system here is case-sensitive, whereas the old one wasn't. If that doesn't work, please let me know what you were looking for by e-mail at tim.hsu@sjsu.edu, and I'll see what I can do to fix the problem.

And I can't resist one bit of shameless self-promotion: Please check out my AMS/MAA textbook, Fourier Series, Fourier Transforms, and Function Spaces: A Second Course in Analysis (pictured at left). There are a lot of textbooks for a first undergraduate course in analysis, but relatively few for a second course. And my book's approach is a little different than that of other "second course in analysis" books: On the principle of "life is uncertain, eat dessert first", the book aims to tell a fairly complete story of the convergence of Fourier series and Fourier transforms without requiring a course in Lebesgue integration as background. If that sounds interesting, like I said, please check it out!

Office: MacQuarrie Hall 316 (new as of Fall 2021).

Phone: (408)924-5071, fax (408)924-5080.

E-mail: tim.hsu@sjsu.edu. (Note that I no longer use my old email address hsu@math.sjsu.edu. However, I'll probably leave these two sentences on this page in the hope of attracting the attention of future Google searches for hsu@math.sjsu.edu.)

Office hours: None this semester (on sabbatical).

Find me here on Bluesky: @timhsu.bsky.social

Click on the pictures at the top of this page to see a few more pictures (including a Simpsonized version).

Other teaching things:

How to minor or major in math at SJSU, the very short version.
Handouts on writing math in paragraph style and writing proofs (revised August 2008). The first handout is for anyone learning to write up solutions to math problems in complete sentences. The second is aimed at students who know a little bit of linear algebra, but should be useful for anyone learning how to write proofs, since it doesn't really rely on any knowledge of linear algebra. (Someday, I want to turn the second handout into a book; please contact me if (a) you're a publisher, (b) you find the idea interesting, and (c) you can figure out a way to charge less than $10 for it.)
A related handout (taken from the proof notes) about how to give a lecture on mathematics.
Handout on how to do well in college math, especially for beginning students. In three words: Do your homework!
Looking for an advisor for your master's thesis at SJSU? Check out this list of master's and senior theses I've advised at SJSU, Pomona College, and the University of Michigan.
Home pages for some classes I've taught in the past:
- Math 127 (Applied and industrial algebra), Fall 2024.
- Math 131B (Analysis II), Fall 2024.
- Math 131A (Analysis I), Spring 2024.
- Math 42 (Discrete math), Spring 2023.
- Math 142 (Introduction to combinatorics), Fall 2022.
- Math 221B (Higher algebra II), Spring 2022.
- Math 221A (Higher algebra I), Fall 2021.
- Math 128B (Abstract algebra II), Spring 2021.
- Math 128A (Abstract algebra I), Fall 2020.
- Math 131A (Introduction to analysis), Spring 2019.
- Math 30 (Calculus I), Sec 07 (flipped), Fall 2018.
- Math 30 (Calculus I), Sec 01 (standard), Fall 2018.
- Math 108 (Introduction to proof), Spring 2016.
- Math 32 (Multivariable calculus), Fall 2015.
- Math 126 (Introduction to number theory), Spring 2015.
- Math 19 (Precalculus), Spring 2013.
- Math 129B (Linear algebra II), Spring 2012.
- Math 31 (Calculus II), Spring 2010.
- Math 112 (Vector calculus), Spring 2006.
- Math 10 (Mathematics for general education), Spring 2004.
- Math 129A (Linear algebra I), Spring 2002.
- My section of the AMP (Alliance for Minority Participation) Summer Math Intensive Academy, 2001.
- Pomona College, Math 145, Spring 2000-2001 (Hyperbolic geometry)
- Michigan Math Scholars Summer 1998: Codes, ciphers, and secret messages

I'm also the SJSU Math Colloquium chair. Click here for current colloquium info.

If you're looking for information about the Center for Applied Mathematics, Computation, and Statistics (CAMCOS), I have completed my term as the Director of CAMCOS. Please contact the current director, Slobodan Simic, for more about CAMCOS.

My research interests are in various areas of discrete mathematics, especially group theory, which is the mathematical study of symmetry through abstract algebra. I am also interested in other topics in algebra and combinatorics. More specifically, my interests include:

Geometric group theory, especially groups of non-positive curvature;
Combinatorics of partially ordered sets (extremal set theory);
l² invariants, like homology and cohomology, which I gather falls under the buzzword of noncommutative geometry;
Combinatorial game theory, including 0-player games (cellular automata);
Sporadic finite simple groups, and related phenomena, like Moonshine and Moufang loops; and
Modular groups and braid groups of various types.

In the past, I've also been interested in lattices, knots, discrete subgroups of Lie groups, automorphic forms and functions, ideas related to the inverse Galois problem (e.g., dessins d'enfants) and quantum computation.

If you want more details: My CV.

Mailing address:

Tim Hsu
Department of Mathematics
San José State University
San José, CA 95192-0103

Last updated Jan 10, 2025