Having earned only a high school diploma after 3 and a half years of study at Hamburg University , de Boor entered Harvard as a graduate student of mathematics . After working for a year as a research assistant to Garrett Birkhoff , he went to work for General Motors Research in Warren , Michigan , where he met splines . He received his first postgraduate degree , a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan , in 1966 , and then became an assistant professor at Purdue University . In 1972 , he accepted a position as professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Wisconsin – Madison , working out of the UW 's Army Math Research Center , which had recently been bombed in opposition to the Vietnam War
recently been bombed
Sterling Hall bombing
Carl R. de Boor