The MAA is thrilled to announce the 2026 recipients of the Chauvenet Prize, the Euler Book Prize, the Daniel Solow Author’s Award, the George Pólya Awards, the Paul R. Halmos–Lester R. Ford Awards, the Trevor Evans Award, and the Carl B. Allendoerfer Awards.
Chauvenet Prize
Geordie Williamson
"Is Deep Learning a Useful Tool for the Pure Mathematician?" Bulletin (New Series) of the American Mathematical Society 61, no. 2 (April 2024): 271–286.
In "Is deep learning a useful tool for the pure mathematician?", Geordie Williamson offers a personal and informed account of what mathematicians can realistically expect when bringing deep learning tools into their research. Published in a special issue of the Bulletin focused on the potential impact of AI on mathematics, the article draws on Williamson's own extensive experience with these tools to ground an otherwise abstract topic in genuine practice.
Williamson opens with an engaging and accessible introduction to neural networks and deep learning, before developing practical rules of thumb for determining which kinds of mathematical problems are best suited to machine learning approaches. He then illustrates these principles through three compelling examples from the research literature: counterexample construction, conjecture generation, and brute force calculation guidance, chosen for both their clarity and their ability to showcase the range of ways deep learning can serve mathematical inquiry.
The article closes with an excellent bibliography, making it an ideal entry point for any mathematician curious about the growing intersection of artificial intelligence and pure mathematics. Williamson's careful attention to the features that make a problem amenable to deep learning, combined with his accessible prose, exemplifies the spirit of outstanding mathematical exposition that the Chauvenet Prize celebrates.
“This is an important and difficult phase for mathematics, and I hope that articles like this one help our community to find a positive path in our interactions with AI.”
Euler Book Prize
Stéphane Douady, Jacques Dumais, Christophe Golé, and Nancy Pick
Do Plants Know Math? Unwinding the Story of Plant Spirals, from Leonardo da Vinci to Now (Princeton University Press, 2024).
Drawing on their collective backgrounds in physics, biology, mathematics, and journalism, Stéphane Douady, Jacques Dumais, Christophe Golé, and Nancy Pick weave together a narrative that is as visually captivating as it is intellectually rich, featuring hundreds of photographs and reproductions of historical charts alongside a well-researched story spanning centuries of scientific inquiry.
Focusing on phyllotaxis and the Fibonacci series, with forays into logarithmic spirals, soap bubbles, fractals, and Japanese kirigami, the book traces the mathematical patterns found in plant spirals through the work of figures such as Leonardo da Vinci, Charles Darwin, and Alan Turing. The ideas grow in complexity and elegance chapter by chapter without leaving the general reader behind. Try Your Hand activities throughout make the book readily adaptable to classrooms from K–12 through university-level mathematics and science courses.
A testament to the power of interdisciplinary collaboration, Do Plants Know Math? demonstrates that fully appreciating the mathematics of plant growth requires voices from across fields. Accessible, engaging, and genuinely surprising, it is the kind of book that makes an afternoon walk through a garden feel like an entirely new experience.
Group response: “Plant spirals can be mesmerizing, and we four co-authors are thrilled that now the MAA too has been captivated. Our book is proof that the Fibonacci sequence–which occurs in so many plants–truly has extraordinary powers.”
Daniel Solow Author’s Award
Annalisa Crannell, Mark Frantz, Fumiko Futamura
Perspective and Projective Geometry (Princeton University Press, 2019).
Annalisa Crannell, Marc Frantz, and Fumiko Futamura are recognized for their innovative textbook Perspective and Projective Geometry, which bridges the worlds of mathematics and art through a unique approach that uses perspective drawing as a gateway to understanding projective geometry. Structured as an interactive workbook, the text engages students through hands-on discovery and collaborative problem-solving, beginning with a compelling first-day activity where students trace their view through a window onto glass to develop mathematical observation and precise communication skills.
The book's impact on undergraduate education has been both exceptional and sustained. Instructors have described it as transformative to their teaching practice, while students across a wide range of backgrounds have found unexpected common ground in its pages. Senior mathematics majors and art students alike discover new ways of thinking about what mathematics is and what it means to engage with it seriously. Many former students have written to the authors years after graduation to share how the course reshaped the way they see the world around them, from Renaissance paintings to computer graphics.
Supporting the textbook is a comprehensive instructor's manual that draws on more than a decade of pedagogical insight, and the materials have reached hundreds of educators through MAA minicourses held since 2013. Perspective and Projective Geometry exemplifies the kind of undergraduate teaching material that fosters lasting appreciation for the depth and utility of mathematics.
Group Response: “We are indebted to the MAA for providing a community of mathematicians that, in the first place, allowed us to meet one another, and beyond that, to host workshops where we could explore this work with even more mathematicians.”
George Pólya Awards
Dresden, Greg
"Epitrochoids and Hypotrochoids Together Again." The College Mathematics Journal 56, no. 3 (2025): 203--213. https://doi.org/10.1080/07468342.2024.2388009.
In "Epitrochoids and Hypotrochoids Together Again," Greg Dresden revisits two classical families of plane curves in a way that is both accessible and mathematically substantive. Starting from a natural geometric question about rotational symmetry, Dresden reformulates familiar parametric equations using complex variables and Euler's identity, making the symmetry immediately transparent and demonstrating how complex numbers can clarify planar geometry for undergraduate students and instructors alike.
Dresden examines epitrochoids and hypotrochoids together rather than in isolation, tracing how these curves intersect and nest within one another. This investigation culminates in the Nesting Theorem, which precisely characterizes when curves with k-fold symmetry meet and are tangent at predictable collections of points. The proof is rigorous yet accessible, and the article's exploration of unexpected limiting behavior reinforces its central theme: familiar mathematical objects can reveal surprising structure when examined carefully.
Carrillo, Angel, Jonathan Cervantes, Mike Krebs, and Francisco Leon
"A Graph Theorist Plants a Tree." The College Mathematics Journal 56, no. 1 (2025): 42--48. https://doi.org/10.1080/07468342.2024.2377007.
A Graph Theorist Plants a Tree" takes a delightful and unexpected path into graph theory, beginning with something as ordinary as planting a tree and placing a wire mesh guard around it. The mesh suggests a graph, the graph invites coloring, and before long the reader is thinking seriously about the colorability of Cayley graphs of finitely generated abelian groups, culminating in a theorem about their chromatic number.
The article also offers readers a candid look at how mathematical research actually happens, including stops along the way at Overleaf and MathSciNet. Accessible and genuinely engaging, it introduces key ideas in graph theory while planting seeds for future exploration.
Group response: “We are honored and deeply pleased to have been selected for this award. The Mathematical Association of America should itself be commended for promoting mathematical exposition and for helping spread the opportunity to experience the delight of mathematical exploration to the widest audience possible.”
Paul R. Halmos-Lester R. Ford Awards
Christopher Donnay and Matthew Kahle.
"Asymptotics of Redistricting the n x n Grid." The American Mathematical Monthly 132, no. 9 (2025): 856--866. https://doi.org/10.1080/00029890.2025.2542711.
Donnay and Kahle take a question most people encounter in the news and subject it to rigorous mathematical analysis. Modeling a region as an n x n grid, they study how many ways it can be divided into n connected districts of equal size, proving upper and lower bounds on the asymptotic growth rate of such redistricting plans
The results do more than count possibilities. They offer a rigorous explanation for something researchers had observed computationally: when districting plans are sampled uniformly, the vast majority fail to satisfy the legal compactness requirement. The space of all valid plans, it turns out, is dominated by highly irregular examples. That the authors establish this using only elementary tools from combinatorics, graph theory, and asymptotic analysis makes the work all the more impressive.
The article is well-crafted throughout, with helpful figures, clear exposition, and a generous set of open questions that invite further exploration. It is a strong example of mathematics engaging directly with a consequential civic problem.
Christopher Donnay: “Thank you to everyone at the Monthly and the MAA who made this possible, and all of the friends, family, and colleagues that supported us along the way.”
Matthew Kahle: “Thank you for this generous recognition. We are grateful that the committee saw value in connecting elementary combinatorics with a question of real civic importance. We hope the work encourages further dialogue between mathematics, political science, and law.”
Tim Chartier
"Sports Analytics Double Take: The Need for Multiple Perspectives on Data." The American Mathematical Monthly 132, no. 1 (2025): 63--76. https://doi.org/10.1080/00029890.2024.2410144.
Tim Chartier uses the world of sports as a playground for exploring some of the most counterintuitive ideas in data analytics. Through carefully chosen examples, the article brings Simpson's paradox to life by comparing shooting percentages across two players, illustrates why summary statistics alone can mislead, and shows how linear algebra and least squares minimization underpin the ranking systems used in tournaments.
The article's strength lies in how naturally it moves between concrete sports data and broader data science principles. Chartier consistently invites readers to consider what multiple perspectives on the same data can reveal, and where those perspectives might confirm or contradict each other. It is an engaging and accessible piece that demonstrates just how much mathematical depth can be found in a box score.
“Data is an ever-growing part of our world, and the need to interpret it leans heavily on the field of mathematics, impacting researchers and educators alike. As such, it was a joy to learn of The American Mathematical Monthly’s special issue on data science. “
Joseph W. Dauben
"The Mathematics of Crossword Puzzles: In Celebration of Karen Hunger Parshall." The American Mathematical Monthly 132, no. 6 (2025): 479--500. https://doi.org/10.1080/00029890.2025.2477437.
Joseph Dauben takes something millions of people do for fun and reveals just how much mathematics is hiding inside it. The article traces the history of crossword puzzles all the way back to Pompeii before turning to a systematic mathematical analysis of the form, moving through the geometry of the grid, combinatorial questions, statistics, and the role of computers in puzzle construction. It closes with a look at how logical and mathematical thinking can be applied to solving puzzles, along with a collection of puzzles with a mathematical twist.
The piece also serves as a tribute to historian of mathematics Karen Hunger Parshall, whose expertise as both a scholar and a crossword solver is woven throughout the narrative. Accessible, original, and genuinely fun, it is a fine example of finding rigorous mathematics in an unexpected place.
“This article was the result in large measure of information I received from seasoned cruciverbalists Elizabeth Gorski, George Barany, and Christopher Adams, whose help I’m pleased to acknowledge.”
Noah Giansiracusa
"Uncovering the Euclidean Geometry of Data." The American Mathematical Monthly 132, no. 1 (2025): 26--34. https://doi.org/10.1080/00029890.2024.2409614
Noah Giansiracusa makes a compelling case that multidimensional scaling (MDS), a technique for reconstructing Euclidean structure from pairwise dissimilarities, deserves a place alongside principal component analysis in the mathematical foundations of data science. Through examples ranging from Supreme Court voting patterns to Hamming distances and cosine similarity in text analysis, the article shows how ideas from Euclidean geometry and linear algebra can uncover structure hidden within data described only through distances.
The exposition moves naturally between intuition and rigorous mathematics, covering both classical and metric variants of MDS while keeping the underlying ideas accessible and well-motivated. For students and instructors looking to deepen their understanding of the geometric foundations of data analysis, this article offers a clear and substantive entry point.
“It was a great pleasure to write this article helping other mathematicians see the geometry of data, and it gives great pleasure to see how this article resonated with readers and to be recognized with this award.”
Trevor Evans Award
Ari Cruz, Bruce Fang, Pamela E. Harris & J. Carlos Martínez Mori
"Parking Towards √2, One Fraction at a Time," Math Horizons 33, no. 1 (2025): 5–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/10724117.2025.2504268.
Cruz, Fang, Harris, and Martínez Mori present an engaging exploration of parking functions, accessible to readers with minimal mathematical background. The article moves from enumerating parking functions to a variation involving weakly increasing vacillating parking functions, ending with a surprising connection to a simple continued fraction representation of √2, uncovered through the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. Throughout, the authors do an excellent job of modeling what the process of doing mathematics actually looks like.
Pamela E. Harris: “I am deeply honored to be part of the team receiving the MAA Trevor Evans Award. I am extremely grateful to the award committee and to the MAA for recognizing our work.”
Bruce Fang: “It is a great honor to receive the Trevor Evans Award from the MAA, and we would like to thank the selection committee for this recognition.”
Ari Cruz: “Thank you to the MAA for this recognition! It’s an honor to be chosen as the recipients of the Trevor Evans award. This would not have been possible without an incredible team.”
J. Carlos Martínez Mori: “This award is a reminder that exposition is a first-rate pursuit for any professional mathematician!”
Carl B. Allendoerfer Awards
Timothy Y. Chow (2025)
Timothy Y. Chow, "Cooking Poisons: Thinking Laterally with Game Theory," Mathematics Magazine 98, no. 5 (2025): 405–411. https://doi.org/10.1080/0025570X.2025.2555157.
Timothy Chow takes a classic lateral-thinking puzzle, one involving a King, two Royal Servants, and a duel of poisons, and reveals the surprisingly deep game theory hiding inside it. Each servant's choices can be modeled as a non-zero sum game with four possible strategies, and Chow walks readers through the construction of payoff matrices, the concept of mixed strategies, and the discovery of not one but three Nash equilibria.
The article moves from a puzzle that appears to require no mathematics at all to a genuinely advanced application of game theory, with a detour through the movie The Princess Bride along the way. Concise and accessible, it is the kind of piece that works equally well as a resource for an undergraduate game theory course or as an activity for a math club, and it leaves readers wondering what other seemingly non-mathematical puzzles might be hiding serious mathematics beneath the surface.
“It is a pleasant surprise and a great honor to receive the Carl B. Allendoerfer award. The basic insight behind the article is something that I hit upon decades ago, but since I am a skilled procrastinator, it took me forever to write it up. I am glad that I finally did, since it has helped Michael Rabin's puzzle receive the recognition it deserves.”
Thomas Sibley
Thomas Q. Sibley, "Comparing Convexity Measures," Mathematics Magazine 98, no. 3 (2025): 162–174. https://doi.org/10.1080/0025570X.2025.2495526.
In this article, Thomas Sibley surveys six measures of convexity and examines how they compare. The measures range from ratios involving area and perimeter to a probability-based convexity coefficient, and while all share basic desirable properties, Sibley demonstrates that they are capturing meaningfully different features of non-convex sets.
To compare them rigorously, Sibley introduces a dominance criterion based on extreme cases, proving 24 dominance relationships among the 30 possible ordered pair comparisons. The findings carry practical weight as well: several of these measures appear in analyses of gerrymandering, and the results suggest that the choice of measure matters depending on the application. Abundant visual examples throughout aid in understanding, and the article closes with two open conjectures for further exploration.
“The high quality of exposition in the MAA journals is renowned, so it is a great honor to receive the Allendoerfer Award.”
Learn more about the awards and submit a nomination.
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