Roland "Ron" Edwin Larson (born October 31, 1941) is a professor of mathematics at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, Pennsylvania. He is best known for being the author of a series of widely used mathematics textbooks ranging from middle school through the second year of college.
Personal life
Ron Larson was born in Fort Lewis near Tacoma, Washington, the second of four children of Mederith John Larson and Harriet Eleanor Larson. Mederith Larson was an officer in the 321st Engineer Battalion of the United States Army. Mederith Larson served in active duty during World War II, where he was awarded a Bronze Star Medal and a Purple Heart, and the Korean War, where he was awarded an Oak Leaf Cluster and a Silver Star. During the years that Ron was growing up, his father was stationed in several military bases, including Chitose, Hokkaido, Japan and Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. While in Chitose, Ron attended a small DoDDS school, where he was one of only three students in the sixth grade. When Mederith Larson retired from the Army in 1957, he moved with his family to Vancouver, Washington, where he lived until he died (at the age of 89) in 2005. Harriet Larson died (at the age of 95) in the fall of 2009.
Larson spent his first two years of high school at Leilehua High School in Wahiawa, Hawaii. In 1957, when his family moved to Vancouver, Washington, Larson enrolled in Battle Ground High School, where he graduated in 1959. On October 29, 1960, at the age of 18, he married Deanna Sue Gilbert, also of Vancouver, Washington. Deanna Gilbert was the second child of Herbert and Dorothy Gilbert. Ron and Deanna Larson have two children, Timothy Roland Larson and Jill Deanna Larson Im, five living grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Their first grandchild, Timothy Roland Larson II, died at birth on summer solstice, June 21, 1983.
Larson is the third generation of Norwegian and Swedish immigrants who left Scandinavia to homestead in Minnesota in the late 1800s. The surnames and immigration dates of his great-grandparents are Bangen (1866, Norway), Berg (1867, Norway), Larson (1868, Norway), and Watterburg (1879, Sweden).
Larson has contributed several thousand dollars to Republican politicians, including Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, and Scott Brown.
Education
From 1959 until 1962, Ron and Deanna Larson started and operated a small business, called Larson's Custom Quilting. In 1962, they sold the business and Ron began attending Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. In 1964, he obtained his associate degree from Clark. Upon graduation from Clark College, Larson was awarded a scholarship from the Alcoa Foundation, which he used to attend Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He graduated, with honors, from Lewis & Clark in 1966. During the four years from 1962 through 1966, Ron worked full-time, first at a restaurant and then at a grocery store, in Vancouver and Deanna worked full-time as the secretary to the president of Roberts Motor Company in Portland, Oregon.
From 1966 to 1970, Larson attended graduate school at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He received his master's degree in 1968 and his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1970. While at the University of Colorado, Larson was the recipient of an NDEA scholarship and an NSF fellowship. He also served as a teaching assistant. His Ph.D. dissertation "On the Lattice of Topologies" was written under Wolfgang J. Thron. Larson's Ph.D. lineage, as listed by the North Dakota State University, traces back through George David Birkhoff, Joseph Louis Lagrange, Leonhard Euler, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the co-developer of calculus.