there was a boy in Tokyo who was an art prodigy. When he was a grade school child, he won numerous art awards including first prize in the junior division of Japan's national printmaking contest inaugurated by the Ministries of Postal Services and Education. He later lost his confidence in art, however, and went on to mathematics where good, bad and ugly are better defined and he was more comfortable. His name is
 Junpei Sekino ♪

With his sons, Kenji (8, left) and Jiro (6, right), in San Diego in 2001.  


Biographical Sketch

From the American Mathematical Monthly, March 1999: Junpei Sekino finished an undergraduate program in chemistry at Nihon University, Tokyo, and came to Oregon State University, where he was influenced by teachers/mentors Gordon W. Gilkey, Ze'ev B. Orzech, and J. Wolfgang Smith. After receiving a second bachelor's degree in art, he earned his Ph.D. in algebraic topology under Smith. He is Professor at Willamette University, where he was once the Mortarboard Professor of the Semester. His hobbies include wild mushroom hunting, printmaking, and fractal plotting. His prizewinning web site "Sekino's Fractal Gallery" can be accessed via the home page of the Pacific Northwest Section of the Mathematical Association of America (http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cayf/Pacnortsect.html).

Honor: At Willamette University, Sekino became the third faculty member to be honored by the student body as the Mortarboard Professor of the Semester.

What he taught: At Willamette, he taught a wide range of subjects including Modern Geometry, Modern Algebra, Linear Algebra, Topology, Advanced Calculus, Numerical Analysis, Functions of Complex Variables, Differential Equations and Discrete Mathematics.

On the right, Kenji (4) depicted his papa teaching modular arithmetic.  

Aside from teaching, he was a regular member of the faculty participation seminar organized by the Computer Science and Mathematics Departments and took part in studying and lecturing topics in the Theory of NP-Completeness, Operating Systems and the Science of Programming.

Publications:
  • Homology on the Category of Submersions with J. Wolfgang Smith of Oregon State University, Houston Journal of Mathematics, 4(5) 1979, 565-601.
  • Application of Cubic Splines on Contour Plotting with Nicholas Liepins of Willamette University, Mathematics Magazine, 63(5) 1990, 343-345.
  • Application of Computing Topography to Geophysical Problems with Vitaly Morachevsky of Russian Academy of Ecological Science, Proceedings of St. Petersburg State University (Geography/Geology Branch), 2(14) 1993, 68-73.
  • Contour Plotting for Smooth Surfaces (in Russian) Proceedings of St. Petersburg State University (Astronomy/Mathematics/Mechanics Branch), 4(22) 1994, 117-118.
  • n-Ellipses and the Minimum Distance Sum Problem, the lead article of the American Mathematical Monthly, 106(3), 1999, 193-202.
  • The Band around a Convex Set, College Mathematics Journal, 32(2), 2001, 111-114.



    Computer-Generated Black Butte, Oregon.  

    The contour plotting algorithm can be applied on various subjects including upconverting an image resolution and geophysical problems as shown in the third article.


    Hobbies

    Wild Mushroom Hunting: Oregon's Willamette Valley where Sekino has lived for 50+ years and its surrounding mountains become exceptionally good wild mushroom hunting grounds in the spring and fall because of its warm and wet weather.

    It is a large valley sandwiched between the Coast Mountains and Cascade Range and both mountains provide numerous edible mushrooms including what the locals consider the best: Golden chanterelles, king boletus, American matsutake and various morels. Chanterelles and matsutake can be found in the late summer and fall, morels in the spring and king boletus in the spring in the east of the Cascades and in the fall in the Coast Mountains.

    Sekino's favorites are matsutake and hatsutake (lactarius) that make excellent Japanese cuisines. Cooking is his hobby as well, and he has done most of the cooking throughout his life.



    Spring King Boletus      American Matsutake Golden Chanterelles


    "True" Morels    Autumn King Boletus Early Morels


    Printmaking: Sekino's father, Jun-ichiro Sekino, was a renowned printmaker in Japan and taught Junpei painting and printmaking from his early childhood. Sekino has retained his interest and skills in the unique Japanese art medium of multicolor woodblock printmaking and taught it twice at Willamette University, once for the community (1982) and once in Elderhostel (1983) through the Office of External Education. The local newspaper of Salem, Oregon, had a few articles on Sekino's art-related profile:

  • Elderhostel by Lewis H. Arends Jr., Statesman-Journal, July 13, 1983.
  • Love for Oregon shows in every line by Ron Cowan, Statesman-Journal, October 7, 1994.
  • Artistry meets mathematics by Dana Haynes, Statesman-Journal, June 1, 1999.
    •


    "Humuhumunukunukuapua'a"

    Fractal Plotting: In the early 1980s, following the red-hot trend among mathematicians created by Mandelbrot, Sekino acquired his first computer, Apple III, with a Pascal compiler and began plotting fractals. Since then he has upgraded his computers several times and plotted thousands of computer-generated images, part of which can be seen in his website called Sekino's Fractal Gallery. Here are examples from the gallery.



    The Mandelbrot Set "Broken Taiko Drum"




    The Seventh Degree Mandelbrot Set Mapped on a Torus




    A Newton Fractal "Newton's Apple"




    A Julia Set "Dragon's Egg"




    "Barn Owl" Mapped on a Sphere


    Postface

    As of this writing in September of 2020, Sekino lives in a large and well facilitated retirement community called Willamette View with more than 500 residents situated near the southern border of Portland, Oregon. The pandemic by the novel coronavirus that is now expected to last for years to come began last January with just one confirmed case of an infected man and has so far killed 200,000 people in the U.S.

    To prevent the virus from spreading, the residents are required to wear face masks in the public areas and maintain the "social distance" of at least six feet from each other. They are also forbidden to congregate in more than a few people or have their relatives and friends visit their residence from outside. The residents are free (albeit discouraged) to go outside of the facility but even then most of the restaurants only serve takeout meals (if they are open), the performing arts such as theaters and concerts are postponed and popular tourist spots are mostly shut down.

    Under such circumstances, the residents have a difficult time passing the days of their precious remaining years joyfully, unless they have hobbies and passions such as creating art and craft, woodworking, gardening and doing research on their family genealogy. Willamette view has art studios and galleries, woodworking shops, garden plots and libraries to encourage the residents to find their hobbies.

    Sekino is among the fortunate as he acquired computer programming skills at Oregon State University in the 1960s and has kept using it for his computer graphics with a passion. Last year, he displayed sixty framed pieces of his computer-generated art in one of the galleries, which caused "the talk of the house" according to his friendly fellow residents. He has unlimited supplies of ideas that would keep him busy and happy for the rest of his life.

    Besides how to survive the coronavirus, the big question he now has is whether or not constantly dealing with computer programming that requires rigidly logical thinking will keep him from the most feared disease among the residents—dementia. He will find out and keep you posted, hopefully ☺




    "The Mandelbrot Moon over Fractal Mountains"  



    Junpei Sekino, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, Willamette University, Salem, Oregon.
    The website was initially posted on January 1, 1997, and last updated on September 26, 2020.

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