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Richard Bohmer was a native New Yorker, an only child and grew up in a middle class family. His father a doctor and his mother an elementary teacher to whom he inherited the passion for teaching. At the age of 14, he was awarded a gold medal at the 22^nd International Mathematical Olympiad, receiving a perfect score of 42 and becoming one of just 26 participants to attain this score, the youngest ever to do so. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School and went on to Columbia University where he won the Putnam competition at the age of sixteen years and four months, making him one of the youngest Putnam Fellows in history.

The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, often abbreviated to the Putnam Competition, is an annual Mathematics Competition for undergraduate college students at institutions of higher learning in the United States and Canada. He was a Putnam Fellow two more times during his undergraduate years. After graduating as valedictorian at age 18 with a summa cum laude in Mathematics and Music, he earned his Ph.D. at age 20.

He had numerous achievements, countless recognition, which earned him a position as an associate professor at Harvard. At the age of 26, he was made a full, tenured professor making him the youngest full professor in the history of Harvard, surpassing previous then-youngest professors.

Richard was also a composer and solver of chess problems and had studied the mathematics of still life patterns in that cellular automaton rule, and the connections between mathematics and music. He was part of the Advisory Board of the Journal of Mathematics and Music and a faculty adviser to the Harvard Israel Review.

Indeed his achievements were extraordinary and people of all ages admired him. Not only was he fortunate when it came to the professional aspects of his life but also with his personal life. He married his college sweetheart Patricia Lawrence who came from an affluent family background, a prima ballerina and an owner of a school of ballet for little girls. They were so happy and in love and the only thing, that lacking in their lives was having their own child. 

Nonetheless, they were happy and contented but things changed when Christina Marie Hairston Kennard crossed Richard Bohmer’s path.