A Random Ladder Game: Permutations, Eigenvalues, and Convergence of Markov Chains

Les Lange is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Emeritus Dean of Science now serving San Jose State University as a volunteer at the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories on Monterey Bay. He learned mathematics at Berkeley, Valparaiso, Stanford, and Notre Dame. A complex variable Ph.D. thesis under Wladimir Seidel followed an M.S. with George Polya. A Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, he has written a linear algebra book; a geometry paper with Don Chakerian which received the MAA Lester R. Ford Sr. Award; and, with G. L. Alexanderson, the extensive P6lya obituary for the London Mathematical Society.