Martin John Broekhuysen, mathematician and poet
Martin John Broekhuysen lobbied Capitol Hill this year for the National ALS Registry.

By Jeannie M. Nuss Globe Correspondent / November 30, 2008
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Martin John Broekhuysen was no ordinary mathematician. He studied psychology, he sang baritone in a classical music chorus, he read Robert Frost and William Butler Yeats, and he wrote poetry.






In "For The Orators," he wrote: "Athenian boys train/ on questions, in a grove./ Words wrestle words,/ the clever theorems show."

Mr. Broekhuysen, a Cambridge-based teacher, poet, and mathematician, died on Nov. 17 - "a prime number," his wife noted - at his home in Cambridge, five years after he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease. He was 67.

Mr. Broekhuysen was born in Bristol, Conn., and raised in Branford, Conn. He attended Branford High School.

He earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics in the early 1960s from Harvard University in Cambridge, where he worked as the night editor for The Harvard Crimson. He earned his master's and doctoral degrees in mathematics from Dartmouth College in 1965 and 1969.

Mr. Broekhuysen taught mathematics at Talladega College in Alabama while on a six-month sabbatical from graduate school.

"He was a real perfectionist," said his wife of 25 years, Jacqueline (Cohen) of Cambridge. "It took him 17 hours to prepare one lesson."

After he earned his doctorate, Mr. Broekhuysen spent most of his professional life as a computer software writer and editor.

"He's a plugger," his wife said. "Assiduous is the word."

Mr. Broekhuysen was a charter member of the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics, where he helped translate the original information-mapping software into prototypes of the sophisticated election-night projections used today in national elections.

He met his wife when they worked together at Harvard in 1980.

"We shared an office that used to be an apartment," she said. "I used to sleep under the desk, and he'd bring me coffee in the morning."

He left Harvard in 1984 to work for several Boston-based software firms, writing code and user manuals for some of the earliest operating systems.

Mr. Broekhuysen also worked with Amnesty International on behalf of prisoners of conscience in the 1970s and early '80s.

"He really believed in human rights," his wife said. "He felt it was very wrong to torture people for political reasons. Torture was just wrong, period."

After retiring from Lotus/IBM in Boston in 2002, his last job in the software industry, Mr. Broekhuysen taught math and science at Castle School in Cambridge, a residential school for troubled teenagers.

"Here's a guy who's trained in mathematics and kind of an engineering type, and none of it really excited him," his wife said. "He loved poetry, and he loved people."

His poetry appeared in several periodicals, including The Nation and Ararat, during the 1970s and early 1980s.

Mr. Broekhuysen wrote poems such as "How We Are Lived" that combined philosophy, history, and intellect: "The hill is bare/ where my father lies,/ no weight breaks/ the great heart there."

He also studied modern psychoanalysis at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, and was midway through certification when he was diagnosed with ALS in 2003.

"He was very interested in people," said his stepdaughter, Britt Medoff of Newton. "He was very interested in figuring out what made people tick."

Mr. Broekhuysen worked on behalf of ALS patients, lobbying on Capitol Hill this year for the National ALS Registry and for funds to study and treat veterans with the disease. He appeared in a national telethon and participated in a panel at Harvard Medical School.

His battle with ALS did not cause Mr. Broekhuysen to lose his sense of humor.

"He had a very dry sense of humor and he liked off-color jokes," Medoff said. "As he got sicker, he felt freer to tell them."


In addition to his passions for poetry and psychology, Mr. Broekhuysen also was very involved in music.

"He was trained on classical piano and violin and then rebelled," his wife said.

He sang baritone with the Spectrum Singers, a classical-music chorus in Boston; Norumbega, a group in greater Boston; the Bread and Puppet Domestic Resurrection Circus chorus in Glover, Vt.; and Village Harmony, a world folk music ensemble based in Plainfield, Vt.

"I remember seeing him singing in performances," Medoff said. "He had a very, very deep bass voice."

His family described him as eclectic, supportive, and honest.

"He was just a rock," said his daughter, Vera Martina of Cambridge. "He was the most supportive man I've ever met. He trusted people, and you trusted his opinion. You weren't worried about him soft-soaping you."

In addition to his wife, stepdaughter, and daughter, Mr. Broekhuysen leaves a sister, Nina Broekhuysen Garrett of Old Saybrook, Conn.; a stepdaughter, Lucia Huntington of Newton; and three grandchildren.

Services have been held.