Faculty Spotlight: Harry Mairson
Harry Mairson
Every month, we interview a faculty member for our undergraduate newsletter. In October 2021, we spoke to Harry Mairson, Professor of Computer Science.
Can you tell us a little about your academic background?
In high school I was interested in math, logic, and philosophy. At about the same time, I started building musical instruments — two harpsichords, which I built from kits, during the height of the 1970s “early music” movement. At university, I studied mathematics, but took a year off to go work for a harpsichord maker. And then I did a Ph.D. in computer science, and during that time built a clavichord, a kind of keyboard instrument whose plans I got from the Smithsonian Museum.
As a professor, I ended up doing research into the design of programming languages. The philosophers I admired, who figured out a lot about how language works, really had an impact on computer languages! I always knew I wanted to be a professor, and going to graduate school in the heart of the emerging Silicon Valley never really turned my head.
How did you come to teach at Brandeis?
I grew up in Lexington, and in high school used to go to concerts at Brandeis. The violinist, Robert Koff, once in the Juilliard String Quartet, was the chair of the Music department, and Bob's wife Rosalind was my harpsichord teacher. His harpsichord accompanist, John Gibbons, married someone who years later was our younger son’s cello teacher. It’s a small world.
My Boston Jewish family always supported Brandeis. My grandfather, not a wealthy man, gave money to Brandeis, and was honored on Founder’s Day in 1960. The printed testimonial he received was kept by my grandmother like it was the Magna Carta. It’s been on my office wall since when I was an assistant professor. My father, an engineer, wrote with colleagues to then-President Abram Sachar about starting a computer science department—in the 1960s.
I honor the memory of my beloved parents and grandparents by being a professor here, and doing a good job. The university was part of their immigrant experience, and their contribution to the well-being of this country.
How does your work relate to musical instrument design?
Classical stringed instruments — the violin, viola, violoncello, bass — are designed with straightedge and compass constructions that are right out of a 10th grade geometry class. Geometry is how Renaissance architects, furniture makers, painters, and instrument makers — who likely couldn’t multiply or divide — calculated distances and areas. When I saw the geometry behind a violin design, math and musical instrument making became one.
I implemented a programming language specialized for musical instrument design, and I’ve become a serious violoncello maker — our younger son plays my last, best cello, which he says is better than the one we bought for him years ago. (His older brother plays the clavichord I built in graduate school, which I just restored.). While I use traditional methods, I’m also interested in CT scanning, 3D printing, CNC (computer numerically controlled) machining, as a way of informing the work of violin makers. My best colleague at Brandeis is Ian Roy, who runs the Maker Lab — I wish I knew what he knows!
I just returned from Cremona, home of Antonio Stradivari and the great Italian tradition of violin making. I spoke there at the Mondomusica festival to present a set of technical posters I made about a Stradivari violoncello that is in Cremona's Museo del Violino — all from a CT scan I organized for this cello — and also a full-sized 3D print of it, made with Ian’s help. This is my contribution to “non-invasive museum curatorship” — protect the museum’s treasure, but give everyone access to everything about it, from measuring to touching. The posters are for sale at the Museo, and the 3D print is there for hands-on encounters.
What excites you about working with Brandeis students?
An undergraduate once asked me, “How has Brandeis changed since you started teaching here?” I answered, “Really, it hasn’t changed much — I’m the one who changed!” I started teaching here when I was 30, and now I’m 65.
What has pleased me the most about working with and talking to Brandeis students is when I could forget about being a professor. Sometimes — not always, but sometimes! I’ll meet a group of undergraduates, usually through a course I’m teaching, and I think to myself — if I was still an undergraduate, if I was still in college, I would want to be friends with those people. I get to talk to them, solve problems with them, joke with them, and even pretend (to myself, not to them!) that I am one of them. They remind me of my friends from college, who I’m still friends with, and who I still love. The ability to reach beyond the moment we are at in our life’s arc, and identify with those on their own paths, is a great blessing. I feel really fortunate to have had those moments.