Kirk Larsen first met Jackson Lusk after IntroDUCKtion in 2009.
“I was walking by the LLC and he just threw me a Frisbee,” Larsen said. “Consequently, we became good friends.”
Larsen and a couple dozen students gathered in a small room below the math library on Friday evening to remember University junior Jackson Lusk. Lusk, who was an honors student majoring in mathematics, was found dead in his apartment on Jan. 16. His cause of death is pending in a toxicology test, according to the Lane County Medical Examiner’s office.
Hal Sadofsky, head of the mathematics department, attended the event and encouraged students to write about their memories of Lusk on sheets of paper that were passed around and will be sent to Lusk’s parents.
University senior Angela Krause, who helped organize Friday’s gathering, first met Lusk in a math class last summer.
“He was so smart,” Krause said. “We needed to do something for those of us who knew him,” she said.
After some moments of tears and silence, students began sharing funny stories about Lusk and his passion for math.
“He would always make fun of me for how I drew my sigmas,” Krause said. “He hated my sigmas.”
One student remembered Lusk spending hours in his spare time going through math theorems on Wikipedia. He described Lusk’s curiosity as “contagious.”
Both Krause and Larsen said Lusk planned to get a Ph.D in mathematics and wanted to do research. Larsen said Lusk inspired him to become a math major.
“He was really ambitious,” Larsen said.