Mathematics is both a discipline in itself and a fundamental tool for research in many fields, including the physical and life sciences, computer science and engineering, the social sciences, statistics and business.
Many undergraduate majors have a co-major in one of the physical sciences, engineering, or finance.
The research program of the Department is in pure mathematics and concentrates on algebraic geometry, algebraic topology, algebraic number theory, combinatorics and algorithms, logic and programming semantics, representation theory, Riemannian geometry, several complex variables, string theory, and mathematical physics. A concentration in applied mathematics has been started recently. This collection, established in 1948, contains approximately 10,000 monograph volumes and receives some 200 current serial titles. It has the collected works of nearly 150 mathematicians of the 19th and 20th centuries, and a collection of 82 French mathematical seminars. Because of space limitations, a significant number of older mathematics journals and monographs are now located in High Density Storage, from which they can be retrieved daily.