When students walk into Nathanael Ackerman's Math 104 and Math 170 classes, they expect to be lectured by an expert on derivatives, logarithms and complex numbers. What they may not know, though, is that their professor is equally proficient in takedowns, half-nelsons and arm drags.
Ackerman - who has taught at Penn since 2006 - represented Great Britain as a freestyle wrestler throughout the early 2000s, competing in five World Championships and the 2004 Summer Olympics.
Yet the wrestler-turned-professor sees nothing unusual about his status as both.
"Wrestling and math go really well together," he said. "When you're doing math, you're in the zone, working like crazy, and wrestling forces you to get out of it. That's very important because if you don't get out of it, you can go down a path that isn't the right one and you don't see that until you take a step back.
"You can't do math while you're wrestling - it's not possible."
To give himself that outlet, Ackerman signed on this September as a volunteer assistant coach for the Quakers. He reached out to then-coach Zeke Jones, whom he had known for a while, as both were prominent in the international wrestling scene.
In fact, the two had a chance encounter while Ackerman was training in 1996.
"I remember him showing me some technique," he said. "I was just some random guy that he showed it to. He walked in and I asked him if he could show me some ankle lace techniques, and he did."
Ackerman's wrestling career began in the eighth grade, when he signed up for a rugby gym class. The coach noticed that the young Ackerman strongly preferred tackling to running and encouraged him to go into wrestling.
When it came time for him to choose a college, he went with Harvard because, as he says, it "was one of the few places that had both top-quality math and top-quality wrestling."
And towards the end of his time with the Crimson, he recognized the importance of his European heritage - he had lived in Britain for almost six years. Upon receiving British citizenship, he began wrestling internationally for Great Britain.
But he continued to train in Cambridge, Mass., with legendary Russian coach Granit Taropin, who has worked with three Olympic gold medalists in the past 25 years. Ackerman credits Taropin for transforming him into an Olympic-caliber wrestler.
Ackerman's best finish at a major international tournament came at the 1999 World Championships - his first - when he finished 16th. Still, the highlight of his career was undoubtedly the 2004 Olympics, when he was the only British wrestler in Athens.
He drew a three-time World Champion and the eventual silver medalist in the round-robin portion, and while he didn't win any matches, he loved the experience.
"I worked really really hard and it took an incredible amount of effort just to walk out on that mat," he said.
Ackerman wrestled for two more years, until he finished up his graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He came to work at Penn, giving up international wrestling due to the time demands.
Before every major tournament, Ackerman would travel to a remote area of the former Soviet Union to train intensely for two to three weeks. While there, he says, the only things to do were eat, sleep and wrestle.
That presented a problem, however, when the most important tournaments were in April, September and October.
"You can't teach and wrestle competitively," he said. "The university kind of likes you to be in the same continent as your students."
So for now, Ackerman must satisfy his love for wrestling through volunteering with the Quakers. And while he doesn't flaunt his past in front of his students, some of them have managed to find out from his Wikipedia page or another source.
"They think it's very cool," he said. "I don't think there are that many teachers who have been competitive athletes."
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