The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure and applied mathematicians; computer scientists; statisticians; and many others in academia, government, business, and industry.
Lester Randolph Ford Sr. was an American mathematician, editor of the American Mathematical Monthly from 1942 to 1946, and president of the Mathematical Association of America from 1947 to 1948.
Ivan Morton Niven was a Canadian-American mathematician, specializing in number theory and known for his work on Waring's problem. He worked for many years as a professor at the University of Oregon, and was president of the Mathematical Association of America. He was the author of several books on mathematics.
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.
Andrew James Granville is a British mathematician, working in the field of number theory.
Ralph Philip Boas Jr. was a mathematician, teacher, and journal editor. He wrote over 200 papers, mainly in the fields of real and complex analysis.
The Chauvenet Prize is the highest award for mathematical expository writing. It consists of a prize of $1,000 and a certificate, and is awarded yearly by the Mathematical Association of America in recognition of an outstanding expository article on a mathematical topic. The prize is named in honor of William Chauvenet and was established through a gift from J. L. Coolidge in 1925. The Chauvenet Prize was the first award established by the Mathematical Association of America. A gift from MAA president Walter B. Ford in 1928 allowed the award to be given every 3 years instead of the originally planned 5 years.
The Paul R. Halmos – Lester R. Ford Award is a $1,000 prize given annually by the Mathematical Association of America for authors of articles of expository excellence published in The American Mathematical Monthly or Mathematics Magazine. It is awarded to at most four authors each year. The prize was established in 1964 as the Lester R. Ford Award to honor the contributions of mathematician and former MAA president Lester R. Ford. In 2012 the award was renamed the Paul R. Halmos – Lester R. Ford Award to honor the contributions of former The American Mathematical Monthly editor Paul R. Halmos and the support of the Halmos family for the awards. Halmos himself received the award in 1971 and 1977.
Harold P. Boas is an American mathematician.
Jerry Lawrence Kazdan is an American mathematician noted for his work in differential geometry and the study of partial differential equations. His contributions include the Berger–Kazdan comparison theorem, which was a key step in the proof of the Blaschke conjecture and the classification of Wiedersehen manifolds. His best-known work, done in collaboration with Frank Warner, dealt with the problem of prescribing the scalar curvature of a Riemannian metric.
Justin Jesse Price was an American mathematician, known for several textbooks and contributions to his field.
Leonard E. Gillman was an American mathematician, emeritus professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He was also an accomplished classical pianist.
Vilmos Totik is a Hungarian mathematician, working in classical analysis, harmonic analysis, orthogonal polynomials, approximation theory, potential theory. He is a professor of the University of Szeged. Since 1989 he is also a part-time professor at the University of South Florida (Tampa).
Benjamin Franklin Finkel was a mathematician and educator most remembered today as the founder of the American Mathematical Monthly journal. Born in Fairfield County, Ohio and educated in small country schools, Finkel received both a BS and MA from Ohio Northern University, then known as Ohio Normal University. In 1888 he copyrighted A Mathematical Solution Book. The purpose of the book was to provide mathematics teachers a text utilizing a systematic method of problem solving, "The Step Method", representing a chain of reasoning, in logical order, to arrive at the correct result. The first edition was postponed until 1893, due to financial problems of the original publisher. The book's preface stated that the work was based upon eight years of teaching in the public schools. This was followed by following editions in 1897, 1899 and 1902. In 1895 he became professor of mathematics and physics at Drury University, then known as Drury College. He was a University Scholar in Mathematics at the University of Chicago from 1895–1896. In 1906 he was awarded a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, where he had earlier earned an additional master's degree in 1904 and a Harrison fellow appointment in 1905. He was a member of the American Mathematical Society, 1891; the London Mathematical Society, 1898; and Circolo Matematico di Palermo, 1902. He retained his professorship at Drury College until his death in 1947.
History of the Theory of Numbers is a three-volume work by Leonard Eugene Dickson summarizing work in number theory up to about 1920. The style is unusual in that Dickson mostly just lists results by various authors, with little further discussion. The central topic of quadratic reciprocity and higher reciprocity laws is barely mentioned; this was apparently going to be the topic of a fourth volume that was never written.
Edward R. Scheinerman is an American mathematician, working in graph theory and order theory. He is a professor of applied mathematics, statistics, and computer science at Johns Hopkins University. His contributions to mathematics include Scheinerman's conjecture, now proven, stating that every planar graph may be represented as an intersection graph of line segments.
Gerald Lee Alexanderson (1933–2020) was an American mathematician. He was the Michael & Elizabeth Valeriote Professor of Science at Santa Clara University, and in 1997–1998 was president of the Mathematical Association of America. He was also president of The Fibonacci Association from 1980 to 1984.
Herbert Ellsworth Slaught (1861–1937) was an American mathematician who was president of the Mathematical Association of America and editor of the journal American Mathematical Monthly.
Daniel "Dan" Simon Kalman is an American mathematician and winner of nine awards for expository writing in mathematics.
Della Jeanne Dumbaugh is an American mathematician and historian of mathematics, focusing on the history of algebra and number theory. She is a professor of mathematics at the University of Richmond, and the editor-in-chief of The American Mathematical Monthly.
