05/28/2026
In sixth grade, a vocational aptitude test told Jack Graver he was best suited to be a teacher. That gave everyone who knew him a good laugh.
Graver was dyslexic before the word was widely known. His teachers thought he was lazy. He failed German four times. A Latin professor kindly asked him not to come back for the second semester.
After 60 years as a Syracuse Mathematics Department professor, Graver has now retired. The student who struggled to read authored five books and dozens of research papers across multiple fields. One paper, dismissed by its original referee as interesting but of no practical value, became foundational to algorithm design a decade later. He even received a standing ovation from a group of teachers who, after years of teaching long division to their own students, finally understood how it worked.
The aptitude test, it turns out, was right ➡️ https://bit.ly/JackGraver
