MATHEMATICS MAJOR SPOTLIGHT
Student Name: Matous Adamec
Major: Physics, Mathematics
Year in School: Senior
Where are you from?
I am originally from Czechia. I came to America with my parents when I was a child, and we traveled around quite a bit, but I came to Nebraska around 2010 when I was in 7th grade.
What gets you excited about Math?
It's hard to pinpoint this down to a one specific thing. As a physics major, I feel like the abstract nature of most math subjects is very liberating. I very much enjoy learning things at a fundamental level so that they're rooted in my head before I seek out any sort of practical application. Often times in physics we're given formulas or quick derivations and I can never quite grasp them until I understand every piece of the puzzle; of course, math quite literally is all of those puzzle pieces! So, I suppose I find math's abstractness exciting, even if it can be difficult to wrestle with at times.
Favorite math class or instructor? Why?
I'd have to say partial differential equations. Beyond being a much-needed review, it covered math that physics classes were brushing over through most of the last year, which had become a little frustrating to me. No other math class, beyond the very basic ones like the calculus series and linear algebra, has added more to my physics toolbox than PDE.
Another close competitor, which is under the CSCE department but very much math-related, is discrete mathematics (CSCE 235). This class goes through all the important concepts of math related to computer science, and it's where I learned both logic and proof-writing, which served me in all my other math classes. I think Math 309 covers this now, but discrete was a wonderful class even beyond such basics, and Dr. Hasan made it very engaging.
What are you excited about doing after graduation?
I hope to be doing a lot more school! Right now, my goal is to go to grad school for cosmology, where I hope to do more computational- or theory-focused research (in short, lots of math!).
What is a goal you have accomplished as a Husker?
I think my biggest tangible accomplishments have come through my internship in high energy physics, where I've had the opportunity to do a lot of cool data analysis-related work. Personally, though, I'm happy with myself for the general progress I've made in math. I used to feel like I was always a little behind when it came to math in physics classes, partly because of bad planning on my part (I finished calc and linear algebra a bit too early, so they only came up a year or two later in physics and I'd forgotten a lot). Now, I feel pretty confident about my relationship with math, and physics is more interesting than ever!
What do you hope to cross off your “bucket list” in the next few years?
I have absolutely nothing interesting to add here! The only thing I have planned for whenever I have more free time is returning to the huge stack of books and textbooks that are sitting on my shelf unread.