JACOB GLIDEWELL, 17
BY JEANA DURST
How many 17-year-olds do you know who
have a deep understanding of fractional calculus?
Since the 9th grade, Jacob Glidewell has been
assisting with physics and math research at UAB
and recently completed his senior research project
with Dr. Nkashama, interim chair of the math
department at UAB.
“I always liked math and science from a
young age, and in fourth grade I had a really
good teacher—Ms. Hancock—who got me into
doing competitive math at Clay Elementary,” says
Jacob, now a graduating senior from the Alabama
School of Fine Arts (ASFA). Jacob’s senior
research project, titled, “An Investigation into
Fractional Calculus and Its Applications,” landed
him a spot at the Alabama Regional Science and
Engineering Fair.
Jacob explains further: in calculus,
mathematicians study of rates of change;
in fractional calculus “we generalize those
operations so we can get much more information
out of them and they are a lot easier in
modeling.” He began his senior project with Dr.
Nkashama doing a lot of reading (just consider
the 1700s).
“It was really nice to work under someone who
has been doing math research for so long … not
just learning how to do math research but learning
how the math worked itself,” Jacob remarks.
From May 2019 to January 2020, he worked
on his senior research project. “I would go in and
present the proof I had been working on that
past week, and Dr. Nkashama would provoke
my proofs …. by the end of the meetings we
Jacob spent four weeks working out only one
theorem. “I proved an existence theorem with
what I call a causality function that allows us to
have a concrete understanding of why fractional
calculus models better,” he says. The implications
of this work related to modeling are far-reaching
and particularly relevant to the times we are living
in—the WHO and CDC are now using fractional
calculus models to get better data about the
spread of the coronavirus than they can get from
traditional exponential growth models.
Though Jacob clearly has a natural gift for
30 Bham Family June 2020
mathematics, the reason he shines bright extends
beyond his talents—as his father Shane points
out, he has always put in the work too. “He has
the gift, but he puts 110% effort into it.” And
teachers. “There’s a lot of extra freedom that
ASFA gives their students, and ASFA has some
phenomenal teachers there,” he says, adding
that he always felt so encouraged to pursue his
passions there. This fall Jacob will attend The
University of Alabama on full scholarship to
study mathematics and physics and plans on
pursing a doctorate after that, following in the
footsteps of his UAB professor mentors. Shane
says, “He wants to do he knows what he wants,
and he’s doing everything he can to get it.”
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