Winning isn’t everything, UO mathematician attests

If it weren’t for Sputnik, Jim Isenberg, UO math professor, might have become a professional athlete. OK, not really. He quickly will tell you that his college athletic years at Princeton University happened because he “couldn’t conceive not doing them.”

From 1969 to 1973, Isenberg earned five varsity letters. He competed in cross-country running, wrestling and track. “While I was not very accomplished, the coaches tolerated having me around since, all modesty aside, I was awfully dedicated, and the coaches liked that,” he recalls.

As a wrestler, his only victories were forfeits, “and most of the rest of the matches, I lost by decision rather than by pin, so I saved the team a lot of points.”

“I had wrestled throughout high school and loved the sport,” he said “I was at best a mediocre high-school wrestler, with a roughly even win-loss record, at 95 pounds. When I got to Princeton, I thought that my wrestling days would be over, since besides my lack of any real success, I only weighed 105 pounds, and the lowest weight class in college wrestling was 118. But since I hung around the athletic complex for cross country anyway, and since I knew who the wrestling coach was, I introduced myself to him one day and told him that if they ever needed a 95-pound wrestler, I’d be ready. The shocking thing was, he took me up on my offer.”

Isenberg ran in all of Princeton’s cross-country meets, except for the NCAA championships that Princeton qualified for twice.

He was Princeton’s unofficial representative at numerous marathons, including the Boston and New York City marathons. “The first New York City marathon in 1970 cost $1 to enter and had 100 runners. … Perhaps because I wasn’t one of the leading members of either the cross-country or track teams, Princeton was willing to sponsor my running marathons. I did five or six each year, wearing a Princeton varsity uniform.”

In 1973, Isenberg’s efforts earned him Princeton’s “Class of 1916 Cup,” given to a varsity letter-winner who competes through the senior year and achieves at graduation the highest academic standing.

Today, Isenberg, who has run the Boston marathon 25 times, works on partial differential equations and differential geometry with an emphasis on applications in general relativity and mathematical physics. He has written more than 110 academic papers. He knew he wanted to be a scientist “since the day Sputnik was launched, if not before.”

“As much as I loved studying and learning physics at Princeton,” he said, "I loved participating and competing in sports. Wrestling and running taught me how to work very hard and very tough for a clear and well-defined and immediate goal. It also gave me the chance to work and play with people completely different from the sorts I worked with academically.

“I did not compete in the NCAA nationals in cross country or wrestling, but I did train with teams and individuals that did. I was proud to say that I had rolled around the mat once -- OK, just clowning around -- with Emil Deliere, a national NCAA runner-up in wrestling. And I won an eating contest with Carl Barisich, who went on to play in the NFL for nine years.”