Thomas H. Brylawski, 63, a mathematics professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, died of esophageal cancer
July 18 at the Duke Hospice inpatient facility in Hillsborough, N.C.
Dr. Brylawski, a native Washingtonian, had taught at UNC-CH since 1970. He was known as a lively and passionate
conversationalist whose love of mathematics and art led him to lecture twice at the National Gallery of Art.
He was also a conceptual artist. An early work, "The Flag of Liechtenstein," depicted the flag of the tiny principality in Benday
dots, the trademark of artist Roy Lichtenstein. He also created a rug that depicted a solution to the squared-square problem.
He graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1962, where he won the first and grand prizes in the District's science fair
in 1959. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a master's degree in math from Dartmouth
College in 1968. In 1970, he received a doctorate in math from Dartmouth.
Dr. Brylawski taught hundreds of students during his career at UNC-CH but tried his best to schedule class times late in the
day. A former student, posting a remembrance of him on a UNC-CH memorial site, said that when Dr. Brylawski began
teaching, he was assigned an 8 a.m. class. Rather than get up early for it, he stayed up all night. So when the next semester
brought a class time set an hour later, he said: "Oh, please don't give me a 9 a.m. class. I can't stay up that late!"
He published at least 44 professional articles. He lectured on his field of combinatorics, a branch of pure mathematics that
deals with combinations and permutations. While Dr. Brylawski spent a year as director of the Bologna Cooperative Studies
Program in Italy, he lectured to the class taught by Italian semiotician and philosopher Umberto Eco. He fell in love with Italy,
teaching himself the language and visiting each of the country's provinces.
He also collected every rock-and-roll song in the Top 40 between 1958 and 1966 and recorded and catalogued thousands of
movies on videotape and DVD. Friends said they thought he was the only recognized authority in both the art of Jasper Johns
and the Andy Griffith TV show.
His marriage to Joan Mills ended in divorce.
Survivors include his wife, Bruna Brylawski of Durham, N.C.; two sons from his first marriage, David Brylawski of New York and
Michael Brylawski of Snowmass, Colo.; his parents, Henry H. and Molly S. Brylawski of Washington; a sister, Kathleen B. Miller
of Bethesda; a brother, Samuel Brylawski of Washington; and a grandson.
2007