NFL Player Just Accepted to the Math PhD Program at MIT

From Quartz via H/T at Ace of Spades HQ: Baltimore Ravens player John Urschel may have to juggle his spring training schedule a bit to fit into MIT's class schedule.

The 6'3", 305-pound offensive lineman will begin a PhD in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this year. The Hulk-like math geek, who graduated from Penn State with a 4.0 grade point average, will study spectral graph theory, numerical linear algebra, and machine learning.

...In 2015, Urschel played in the NFL playoffs for the Ravens while simultaneously (pdf) working on a paper on graph eigenfunctions. (What have you done lately?) The paper, entitled, "A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fielder Vector of Graph Laplacians," is available online.

Here Urschel explains why he plays professional football when he regards himself as a mathematician:

"What my mother and a great majority of my friends, family, and fellow mathematicians don't understand is that I'm not playing for the money," he wrote. "I'm not playing for some social status associated with being an elite athlete."

"I play because I love the game. I love hitting people."

This mentality is why he WILL be successful in the NFL.