Rate My Professor Benjamin Richert

Benjamin Richert serves as Chair of the Mathematics Department in the Bailey College of Science and Mathematics at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. He earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in May 2000, specializing in commutative algebra. His dissertation, titled "Monomial Ideals, N-Lists, and Smallest Graded Betti Numbers," was advised by Edward Graham Evans, Jr. Richert holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Economics from Wheaton College, awarded in August 1995. Prior to his role at Cal Poly, he taught a range of courses at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, including Math 116, Math 215, Math 217, Math 312, Math 412, Math 614, and Math 615. He joined the Cal Poly faculty and was awarded tenure in Mathematics in 2008. As department chair, Richert oversees recruitment, faculty development, and the implementation of the university's Learn-by-Doing educational model within mathematics programs.

Richert's research centers on commutative algebra, with particular emphasis on free resolutions, the extremal behavior of Hilbert functions and graded Betti numbers, generic behavior, and Gorenstein rings. His scholarly contributions include numerous peer-reviewed publications in leading journals. Key works encompass "A proof of Evans' convexity conjecture" in Communications in Algebra (2015), "Syzygies of semi-regular sequences" (with Keith Pardue) in Illinois Journal of Mathematics (2009), "The residuals of lex plus powers ideals and the Eisenbud-Green-Harris conjecture" (with Sindi Sabourin) in Illinois Journal of Mathematics (2008), "Lex-plus-powers ideals" (with Christopher Francisco) in the Lecture Notes in Pure and Applied Mathematics series (2007), "Lower bounds for Betti numbers of special extensions" (with Melvin Hochster) in Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra (2005), and "Smallest graded Betti numbers" in Journal of Algebra (2001). He also authored "An avuncular chat about reviewing for Mathematical Reviews" in Notices of the American Mathematical Society (2013) and provided errata for related works. Richert engages with the commutative algebra community via resources such as commalg.org.