Saunders Mac Lane was an American mathematician who co-founded category theory with Samuel Eilenberg.
Antoni Zygmund was a Polish mathematician. He worked mostly in the area of mathematical analysis, including especially harmonic analysis, and he is considered one of the greatest analysts of the 20th century. Zygmund was responsible for creating the Chicago school of mathematical analysis together with his doctoral student Alberto Calderón, for which he was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1986.
Peter David Lax is a Hungarian-born American mathematician and Abel Prize laureate working in the areas of pure and applied mathematics.
Germinal Pierre Dandelin was a French mathematician, soldier, and professor of engineering.
Serge Lang was a French-American mathematician and activist who taught at Yale University for most of his career. He is known for his work in number theory and for his mathematics textbooks, including the influential Algebra. He received the Frank Nelson Cole Prize in 1960 and was a member of the Bourbaki group.
Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al Ḥasan al-Karajī was a 10th-century Persian mathematician and engineer who flourished at Baghdad. He was born in Karaj, a city near Tehran. His three principal surviving works are mathematical: Al-Badi' fi'l-hisab, Al-Fakhri fi'l-jabr wa'l-muqabala, and Al-Kafi fi'l-hisab.
Leonard Eugene Dickson was an American mathematician. He was one of the first American researchers in abstract algebra, in particular the theory of finite fields and classical groups, and is also remembered for a three-volume history of number theory, History of the Theory of Numbers. The L. E. Dickson instructorships at the University of Chicago Department of Mathematics are named after him.
Abū Kāmil Shujāʿ ibn Aslam ibn Muḥammad Ibn Shujāʿ was a prominent Egyptian mathematician during the Islamic Golden Age. He is considered the first mathematician to systematically use and accept irrational numbers as solutions and coefficients to equations. His mathematical techniques were later adopted by Fibonacci, thus allowing Abu Kamil an important part in introducing algebra to Europe.
Robert Parris Moses was an American educator and civil rights activist known for his work as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on voter education and registration in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement, and his co-founding of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. As part of his work with the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition of the Mississippi branches of the four major civil rights organizations, he was the main organizer for the Freedom Summer Project.
Irving Kaplansky was a mathematician, college professor, author, and amateur musician.
Victor Gershevich (Grigorievich) Kac is a Soviet and American mathematician at MIT, known for his work in representation theory. He co-discovered Kac–Moody algebras, and used the Weyl–Kac character formula for them to reprove the Macdonald identities. He classified the finite-dimensional simple Lie superalgebras, and found the Kac determinant formula for the Virasoro algebra. He is also known for the Kac–Weisfeiler conjectures with Boris Weisfeiler.
George William Hart is an American sculptor and geometer. Before retiring, he was an associate professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University in New York City and then an interdepartmental research professor at Stony Brook University. His work includes both academic and artistic approaches to mathematics.
William Edgar Fulton is an American mathematician, specializing in algebraic geometry.
Julius Wilhelm Richard Dedekind was a German mathematician who made important contributions to number theory, abstract algebra, and the axiomatic foundations of arithmetic. His best known contribution is the definition of real numbers through the notion of Dedekind cut. He is also considered a pioneer in the development of modern set theory and of the philosophy of mathematics known as Logicism.
Mathematics education in the United States varies considerably from one state to the next, and even within a single state. However, with the adoption of the Common Core Standards in most states and the District of Columbia beginning in 2010, mathematics content across the country has moved into closer agreement for each grade level. The SAT, a standardized university entrance exam, has been reformed to better reflect the contents of the Common Core. However, many students take alternatives to the traditional pathways, including accelerated tracks. As of 2023, twenty-seven states require students to pass three math courses before graduation from high school, and seventeen states and the District of Columbia require four.
Edward Vladimirovich Frenkel is a Russian-American mathematician working in representation theory, algebraic geometry, and mathematical physics. He is a professor of mathematics at University of California Berkeley, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and author of the bestselling book Love and Math.
Ethan Watters is an American journalist. He is the author of articles for The New York Times Magazine, Spin, Details, Mother Jones, Glamour, GQ, Esquire, and the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine as well as books. He has also appeared on a number of media outlets such as Good Morning America, Talk of the Nation, and CNN.
Claudia Dreifus is an American journalist, educator and lecturer, producer of the weekly feature “Conversation with…” of the Science Section of The New York Times, and known for her interviews with leading figures in world politics and science. She is adjunct associate professor of international affairs and media at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) of Columbia University.
In a publishing career spanning 80 years (1930–2010), popular mathematics and science writer Martin Gardner (1914–2010) authored or edited over 100 books and countless articles, columns and reviews.
The Math Myth: And Other STEM Delusions is a 2016 nonfiction book by Queens College political scientist Andrew Hacker analyzing and critiquing the United States educational system's teaching of mathematics as a linear progression towards more advanced fields. Based off a 2012 New York Times op-ed by Hacker titled Is Algebra Necessary, Hacker disputes that the teaching of advanced algebra, trigonometry, and calculus is useful to the majority of students, arguing that the requirement of advanced mathematics courses in secondary education contributes to dropout rates and impedes socioeconomically disadvantaged students from pursuing further education. Hacker critiques the Common Core system and American focus on STEM education in lieu of social sciences, arguing that the educational system should prioritize 'numeracy' over pure mathematics education.
