Professor Richard Darst received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mathematics from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1957 and 1958, respectively, and his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Louisiana State University in 1960. After two years at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he worked for Purdue University for nine years before coming to Colorado State University in 1971. He spent the 1968/1969 academic year at the University of California at Riverside, the summer, 1969 at the University of California at Berkeley, the 1981/1982 academic year at Stanford, and the spring, 1984 as a Fullbright Lecturer in Egypt.

Professor Darst's mathematical interests include classical and modern analysis (e.g. fractal geometry) and optimization algorithms and models. His three most recent publications are Introduction to Linear Programming, Applications and Extensions, Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York, 1991; ìThe Hausdorff dimension of the non-differentiability set of the Cantor function is [ln(2)/ln(3)]2î, Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, 1993; and ìHausdorff dimension of sets of non-differentiability points of Cantor functionsî, Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 1995.