His Math Text Was the Standard, His Touch in Class Exceptional

"His text really led a major change in emphasis," said Shirley B. Gray, a professor of mathematics at Cal State L.A. "The previous calculus texts almost all centered on strong algebra skills developed via analytic geometry. Leithold was more or less the first to incorporate the concepts and vocabulary of set theory, a major component of 'New Math,' into the calculus curriculum of the 1960s.

"The next generation of authors always checked what they were doing," Gray added, "by looking at Leithold."

Leithold also wrote "Before Calculus," a textbook for pre-calculus students, and "The Calculus Virgin: An Artist's View of the Language of Calculus." The latter was the product of an unusual collaboration with D'Arcy Hayman, a painter, writer and longtime arts director of UNESCO, who illustrated the book with drawings inspired by calculus concepts.

By 1987, the "Calculus Guru," as Leithold was sometimes called, was helping to score Advanced Placement exams and sharing his expertise through the College Board's Advanced Placement Calculus Summer Institutes at Pepperdine and Fordham University in New York. He also taught weekend workshops for Advanced Placement teachers.

When Malibu High teacher Brian Corrigan attended one such workshop last year, his instructor mentioned that "the famous Dr. Leithold" was running a session across the hall. "A buzz of excitement ran through the room," Corrigan recalled. "That's what math teachers get crazy about. They all knew who he was."

In 1998, when Leithold was 72, a teacher who had participated in one of his institutes invited him to help launch a calculus program at Malibu High, which had opened its doors only a few years earlier on a hill above Zuma Beach. Seventy-two would probably strike few people as the right age to plunge into the caldron of hormonal excess known as high school, but Leithold was undaunted. He signed on to co-teach first- and second-year calculus as an unpaid "consultant" to the fledgling school's math department and soon was not only spreading the gospel of calculus but picking up the lingo of the youthful world he had entered. ("Straight trippin' fool" became one of his favorite expressions.)

He later accepted a salary, but his friends were not surprised by his initial arrangement.

"Even at Pepperdine, he would turn his paycheck back to [the university] because he just wanted to teach calculus and make sure what he was writing in his textbook really worked," said Bob Barefoot, a longtime high school teacher in Arizona who knew Leithold for 20 years and co-taught many AP calculus institutes with him.