How important it is to have sound understanding of mathematics to become a Professor?

Hey Dear,

Dear Friend
Mathematics is the integral part of our academic and social life where all the activities revolve around the maths. Starting from day to day life to higher position at professional life require maths at different level, we learn elementery math in school which provides us the strong base till the end of life. As far as professor job is concened math is invitable to solve the purpose at every walk of day to day acaedemic and administrative exercise. As general maths for entire community is much needed while specilized professor require it to solve the individual assignment in specialzed manner where derivatives, operational, binomial eqation, excel oriented algorithm etc apart from these many others applications of maths are expeienced for academic job.
We need to understand the requirement of maths as per the catagorization of professors like humanities, sciences (basic and applied), science and technology, engineeing, management, geography, economics etc. Pofessors are engaged in lecturing, reseach and development at large where maths are required to do the data analysis, and its representations in numeric forms.

In research laboratory scientists are quite dependent on mathemetical tools where core maths are not required though a complementery mathemetical tool is explored in different forms. Scientific professor are having comand on maths up to the certain extent but can not solve any formulae based typical equation. We are growing in highthroughput computational era where entire world is dependent on computation maths which is already programmed and installed in our PC. So professors must be having computational knowledge otherwise very difficult to manage the bulky data which is harvested fom the crucial obsevation. For example a biologist is explianing the DNA and RNA quantification from different populations then howcome it will be representesent in mathematical form which must be self-explanatory for entire scientific and non-scientific community otherrwise there is no use of such study which can not be explained in proper manner. Maths has its own definition where professors exploit it with their own terms and condtions, since computer engineers -hardware and software are quite useful to develop the software which is the digitalilized version of maths being used at large scale irrespective of any specialization.
Hope you must me developing interest in explaining the maths for your academic puropose.
All the best
Manoj

Dear friend, many thanks for your question, here you have not mentioned what is your academic qualifications and what you are doing at present. As you have asked about sound understanding of math to become a professor, it depends upon in which field the person is working as professor.

The professor of Sanskrit do not need to study math at all. On the other hand a professor of Hindi, English or any other language generally do not use math during study, teaching or research work.

But math is really very important for person who is involved in research with some calculations and measurements.

Let me explain with some examples; the person working as professor in chemistry, needs some basic knowledge of math, as the professor has to calculate the amount of certain chemicals, while preparing a solution. The normality, molarity, molal solution can only be prepared, if the professor or person have some knowledge of math.

On the other hand, in the subjects like biology like microbiology, biotechnology, biochemistry, molecular biology many times math is also required for calculations. These calculations are required at the time of some experiment, for preparing a solution of certain concentration. Obviously, here the person with no knowledge of math will face difficulty in carrying out research work.

But it does mean that person not having the knowledge of mathematics will not be eligible to become a professor. Even if some one is poor in mathematics can become successful professor, by getting help from someone for mathematics related problems when ever required.

In my opinion, the person should have sound knowledge of ones subject. As we study math since our school days, every one knows the basics of addition, subtraction, multiply. This is enough to work as a professor. But the professor of physics, geography, geologist, chemistry, architecture and some engineering subjects should have good knowledge of mathematics. The reason being is that, they have to use calculations and measurements at most of the times. It is as simple as that, the person who are good at mathematics are selected in engineering branch, and they have to study some higher level of mathematics during degree program. Person who are not good at mathematics usually opt biology as career. But opting biology for higher studies does not mean that the person can escape from mathematics.

If some one has basic knowledge of mathematics, then he or she can easily survive and progress as professor.

Good Luck...