Maxwell Plummer, a fifth-year doctoral candidate in Rice University’s mathematics department, passed away the week of Sept. 7. He was 26 years old.
Plummer grew up in South Jordan, Utah, the third of Charles and Erica Plummer’s four children. He spent his childhood with a pencil and paper at the kitchen island drawing maps and solving math problems for fun. After graduating from the University of Utah, where he earned the undergraduate award for excellence in graduate courses, he moved to Houston to pursue a doctorate in math at Rice.
Under the supervision of Christopher Leininger, Plummer studied geometric topology and geometric group theory. He published his first article last year, “Axis Bundles in Free-By-Cyclic Groups,” and recently completed his second paper. His dream was to become a tenure-track professor.
“Maxwell was an extraordinary mathematician and a wonderful human being,” said Leininger, a former faculty member at Rice and current professor at the University of Notre Dame. “He had a deep desire to uncover the hidden structure of free-by-cyclic groups (his primary research topic), and it was such a pleasure to watch him peel back layer after layer. His genuine curiosity made our weekly meetings feel effortless, and I will always remember the joy he took in sharing his mathematical world with me, his fellow students and his collaborators.”
In high school, Plummer worked at Mathnasium as a tutor where he learned patience and compassion. At Rice, he taught or assisted in six courses across his time as a graduate student and nurtured the love of mathematics in many younger scholars. His friendships spanned the department, regardless of research interest or cohort, and he often brought people together for game nights and other social gatherings.
“Maxwell was always such an incredibly funny person to me,” said Brian Udall, a doctoral candidate in mathematics. “He was also able to bring people together. My favorite way I experienced this was in our board game nights within the math department. This was where I’d most see his mischievous side.”
Udall, like many others, remembers how Plummer was delighted to share the things he found joy and interest in, whether it was trying, and often failing, to explain a silly joke he and Udall were laughing at or working through complex mathematical problems.
“He made friends in his program as well as with grad students, postdocs and professors around the world, attending conferences and workshops from Montreal to Seoul,” said Charles and Erica Plummer. “He loved his time at a Berkeley conference the best, where his math friends stayed within a block of each other, so they could spend their days researching and their nights playing Magic the Gathering, talking about books and wandering the Bay Area.”
Plummer was universally loved and is already missed by a large network of Rice friends and colleagues. The university will gather to celebrate his memory later this year.
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