Mr. Geller
Richard Geller, b. 1946
When Richard Geller died, students put his catch phrase, “Math is #1,” all over Stuyvesant High School, in New York City, where he had taught. It was taped onto lockers. It was drawn on a couple of desks. It was handwritten on a T-shirt. In the classroom, Geller was passionate and intense and demanding. One student remembered her math grade was the lowest one on her report card, “but it was a Geller grade, and it was the one I was most proud of.” Geller could have retired a decade before he died, but he didn’t want to. He was a math teacher through and through.
This is an edited and condensed version of a speech Geller delivered at Stuyvesant’s graduation in June 2011. He died four months later.
I would like to thank the graduating class for having chosen me as your faculty speaker.
I wondered: Why me? I have been teaching math at Stuyvesant for 29 years and was never chosen before. By the way, 29 is a prime number. There are exactly two factors for 29: 1 and 29.
Maybe I was chosen for the approximately 5 basketballs that I confiscated from students during your four years at Stuyvesant. Or the 17 Frisbees I took away. Or the 113 decks of playing cards. Or the 257 cellphones I took away and brought to Miss Damesek’s office. In case you haven’t figured it out, all those numbers are prime numbers.
No, I don’t think so. I think that you heard three months ago that I have
