Underwood Dudley was born in New York City in 1937. He has bachelor's and master's degrees from the Carnegie Institute of Technology and received the Ph.D. degree (number theory) from the University of Michigan in 1965. He taught at the Ohio State University and at DePauw University, from which he retired in 2004. He is the author of three books on mathematical oddities, The Trisectors, Mathematical Cranks, and Numerology, an elementary number theory text, and is the editor of two collections of mathematical pieces. He has edited the College Mathematics Journal, the Pi Mu Epsilon Journal, and