Stan Wagon
Stanley Wagon is a Canadian-American mathematician, a professor emeritus of mathematics at Macalester College in Minnesota. He is the author of multiple books on number theory, geometry, and computational mathematics, and is also known for his snow sculpture.
Biography
Wagon was born in Montreal, to Sam and Diana (Idlovitch) Wagon.[1] His sister Lila (Wagon) Hope-Simpson died in 2021.[2] Wagon did his undergraduate studies at McGill University in Montreal, graduating in 1971. He earned his Ph.D. in 1975 from Dartmouth College, under the supervision of James Earl Baumgartner. He married mathematician Joan Hutchinson, and the two of them shared a single faculty position at Smith College and again at Macalester, where they moved in 1990.[3][4][5]
Books
- The Banach–Tarski Paradox (Cambridge University Press, 1985)[6]
- Old and New Unsolved Problems in Plane Geometry and Number Theory (with Victor Klee, Mathematical Association of America, 1991)[7]
- Mathematica® in Action: Problem Solving Through Visualization and Computation (W.H. Freeman, 1991; 2nd ed., Springer, 1999; 3rd ed., Springer, 2010)
- Animating Calculus (with E. Packel, TELOS, 1996)
- Which Way Did the Bicycle Go? (with J. D. E. Konhauser and D. Velleman, Mathematical Association of America, 1996)
- VisualDSolve: Visualizing Differential Equations with Mathematica (with Dan Schwalbe, TELOS, 1997; 2nd ed., with Schwalbe and Antonin Slavik, Wolfram Research, 2009).
- A Course in Computational Number Theory (with David Bressoud, Springer, 2000)
- The Mathematical Explorer (Wolfram Research, Inc., 2001)
- The SIAM 100-Digit Challenge: A Study in High-Accuracy Numerical Computing (with Laurie, Bornemann, and Waldvogel, SIAM, 2004)[8]
Other activities
Wagon is also known for riding a bicycle with square wheels,[9][10] for his mathematical snow sculptures,[11][12][13][14][15][16] and for having given the name to the 420 Arch, a natural stone arch in southern Utah.[17]
Awards and honors
Wagon won the Lester R. Ford Award of the Mathematical Association of America for his 1988 paper, "Fourteen Proofs of a Result about Tiling a Rectangle".[18] Wagon and his co-authors Ellen Gethner and Brian Wick won the Chauvenet Prize for mathematical exposition in 2002 for their 1998 paper, "A Stroll through the Gaussian Primes".[19][20]
References
- ^ "Remembering the life of Diana Wagon". Montreal Gazette. 2006-05-09. Retrieved 2022-10-11.
- ^ Lila Hope-Simpson,"Obituary Lila Hope-Simpson", The Atlantic Jewish Council, April 4,2021. Retrieved 2010-01-21.
- ^ Stanley Wagon at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ^ Selected works of Stan Wagon, Berkeley Electronic Press, retrieved 2012-03-10.
- ^ Invited speaker biography, Simon Fraser University, retrieved 2012-03-10.
- ^ Mycielski, Jan (August–September 1987), "Review: The Banach-Tarski Paradox, by Stan Wagon", American Mathematical Monthly, 94 (7): 698–700, doi:10.2307/2322243, JSTOR 2322243.
- ^ Halmos, P. R. (November 1992), "Review: Old and New Unsolved Problems in Plane Geometry and Number Theory, by Victor Klee and Stan Wagon", American Mathematical Monthly, 99 (9): 885–889, doi:10.2307/2324140, JSTOR 2324140.
- ^ Bailey, David (2005), "Review: The SIAM 100-Digit Challenge: A study in high-accuracy numerical computing, by Folkmar Bornemann, Dirk Laurie, Stan Wagon, and Jörg Waldvogel", Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 42 (4): 545–548, doi:10.1090/s0273-0979-05-01066-9
- ^ Petersen, Ivars (April 5, 2004), "Riding on Square Wheels", MathTrek, Mathematical Association of America.
- ^ "It's hip to be square", Lawrence Journal-World, April 17, 1998.
- ^ Graham, Judith (February 8, 2000), "World Warms Up To Snow Sculpting: Teams Find It Cool To Create Art With Back-Breaking Work In Frigid Temperatures", Chicago Tribune.
- ^ Petersen, Ivars (February 18, 2002), "A Snowy Twist", MathTrek, Mathematical Association of America
- ^ Stebbins, Jane (January 30, 2004), "Snow sculptures take shape as deadline nears", Summit Daily News.
- ^ Tang-Quan, Sharon (March 16, 2005), "Snow Moebius Strip: Doing the Twist", Daily Californian.
- ^ Geometry in the Snow, Mathematical Association of America, January 31, 2008.
- ^ Petersen, Ivars (December 26, 2009), "White Narcissus", ScienceNews.
- ^ Webb, Shasta (July 25, 2011) [September 25, 2009], "Smokin' arches: marijuana and the math professor", The Mac Weekly.
- ^ MAA Writing Awards: Fourteen Proofs of a Result about Tiling a Rectangle, retrieved 2012-03-10.
- ^ Chauvenet Prize, MAA, retrieved 2012-03-10.
- ^ Gethner, Ellen; Wagon, Stan; Wick, Brian (1998). "A Stroll Through the Gaussian Primes". The American Mathematical Monthly. 105 (4). Taylor & Francis: 327–337. doi:10.1080/00029890.1998.12004889. ISSN 0002-9890.
External links
- Official website
- v
- t
- e
- 1925 G. A. Bliss
- 1929 T. H. Hildebrandt
- 1932 G. H. Hardy
- 1935 Dunham Jackson
- 1938 G. T. Whyburn
- 1941 Saunders Mac Lane
- 1944 R. H. Cameron
- 1947 Paul Halmos
- 1950 Mark Kac
- 1953 E. J. McShane
- 1956 Richard H. Bruck
- 1960 Cornelius Lanczos
- 1963 Philip J. Davis
- 1964 Leon Henkin
- 1965 Jack K. Hale and Joseph P. LaSalle
- 1967 Guido Weiss
- 1968 Mark Kac
- 1970 Shiing-Shen Chern
- 1971 Norman Levinson
- 1972 François Trèves
- 1973 Carl D. Olds
- 1974 Peter D. Lax
- 1975 Martin Davis and Reuben Hersh
- 1976 Lawrence Zalcman
- 1977 W. Gilbert Strang
- 1978 Shreeram S. Abhyankar
- 1979 Neil J. A. Sloane
- 1980 Heinz Bauer
- 1981 Kenneth I. Gross
- 1982 No award given.
- 1983 No award given.
- 1984 R. Arthur Knoebel
- 1985 Carl Pomerance
- 1986 George Miel
- 1987 James H. Wilkinson
- 1988 Stephen Smale
- 1989 Jacob Korevaar
- 1990 David Allen Hoffman
- 1991 W. B. Raymond Lickorish and Kenneth C. Millett
- 1992 Steven G. Krantz
- 1993 David H. Bailey, Jonathan M. Borwein and Peter B. Borwein
- 1994 Barry Mazur
- 1995 Donald G. Saari
- 1996 Joan Birman
- 1997 Tom Hawkins
- 1998 Alan Edelman and Eric Kostlan
- 1999 Michael I. Rosen
- 2000 Don Zagier
- 2001 Carolyn S. Gordon and David L. Webb
- 2002 Ellen Gethner, Stan Wagon, and Brian Wick
- 2003 Thomas C. Hales
- 2004 Edward B. Burger
- 2005 John Stillwell
- 2006 Florian Pfender & Günter M. Ziegler
- 2007 Andrew J. Simoson
- 2008 Andrew Granville
- 2009 Harold P. Boas
- 2010 Brian J. McCartin
- 2011 Bjorn Poonen
- 2012 Dennis DeTurck, Herman Gluck, Daniel Pomerleano & David Shea Vela-Vick
- 2013 Robert Ghrist
- 2014 Ravi Vakil
- 2015 Dana Mackenzie
- 2016 Susan H. Marshall & Donald R. Smith
- 2017 Mark Schilling
- 2018 Daniel J. Velleman
- 2019 Tom Leinster
- 2020 Vladimir Pozdnyakov & J. Michael Steele
- 2021 Travis Kowalski
- 2022 William Dunham, Ezra Brown & Matthew Crawford
- 2023 Kimmo Eriksson & Jonas Eliasson
- 2024 Jeffrey Whitmer