Euler Book Prize
Encyclopedia
The Euler Book Prize is an award named after Leonhard Euler
and given annually at the Joint Mathematics Meetings by the Mathematical Association of America
to an outstanding book in mathematics
that is likely to improve the public view of the field.
The prize was founded in 2005 with funds provided by mathematician Paul Halmos
and his wife Virginia. It was first given in 2007; this date was chosen to honor the 300th anniversary of Euler's birth, as part of the MAA "Year of Euler" celebration.
Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler was a pioneering Swiss mathematician and physicist. He made important discoveries in fields as diverse as infinitesimal calculus and graph theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion...
and given annually at the Joint Mathematics Meetings by the Mathematical Association of America
Mathematical Association of America
The Mathematical Association of America 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;...
to an outstanding book in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
that is likely to improve the public view of the field.
The prize was founded in 2005 with funds provided by mathematician Paul Halmos
Paul Halmos
Paul Richard Halmos was a Hungarian-born American mathematician who made fundamental advances in the areas of probability theory, statistics, operator theory, ergodic theory, and functional analysis . He was also recognized as a great mathematical expositor.-Career:Halmos obtained his B.A...
and his wife Virginia. It was first given in 2007; this date was chosen to honor the 300th anniversary of Euler's birth, as part of the MAA "Year of Euler" celebration.
Winners
The winners have been:- 2007: John DerbyshireJohn DerbyshireJohn Derbyshire is a British-American writer. His columns in National Review and cover a broad range of political-cultural topics, including immigration, China, history, mathematics, and race. Derbyshire's 1996 novel, Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, was a New York Times "Notable Book of the...
, Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in MathematicsPrime ObsessionPrime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics is a historical book on mathematics by John Derbyshire, detailing the history of the Riemann hypothesis, named for Bernhard Riemann, and some of its applications...
(Joseph Henry Press, 2003). The main subject of this popular-audience book is the Riemann hypothesisRiemann hypothesisIn mathematics, the Riemann hypothesis, proposed by , is a conjecture about the location of the zeros of the Riemann zeta function which states that all non-trivial zeros have real part 1/2...
, concerning the location of the zeros of the Riemann zeta function, and its application to the distribution of prime numberPrime numberA prime number is a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself. A natural number greater than 1 that is not a prime number is called a composite number. For example 5 is prime, as only 1 and 5 divide it, whereas 6 is composite, since it has the divisors 2...
s. Due to a miscommunication, Derbyshire missed the award ceremony. - 2008: Benjamin Yandell, The Honors Class: Hilbert's Problems and Their Solvers (AK Peters, 2002). This book intertwines the stories of the solutions to Hilbert's problemsHilbert's problemsHilbert's problems form a list of twenty-three problems in mathematics published by German mathematician David Hilbert in 1900. The problems were all unsolved at the time, and several of them were very influential for 20th century mathematics...
with the biographies of its solvers. The award was given posthumously to Yandell, who died in 2004. - 2009: Siobhan Roberts, King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry (Walker and Company, 2006). This biography of Harold Scott MacDonald CoxeterHarold Scott MacDonald CoxeterHarold Scott MacDonald "Donald" Coxeter, was a British-born Canadian geometer. Coxeter is regarded as one of the great geometers of the 20th century. He was born in London but spent most of his life in Canada....
also describes the history of geometry and Coxeter's contributions to the field. - 2010: David S. Richeson, Euler’s Gem: The Polyhedron Formula and the Birth of Topology (Princeton University Press, 2008). Richeson relates the history of Euler's formulaEuler characteristicIn mathematics, and more specifically in algebraic topology and polyhedral combinatorics, the Euler characteristic is a topological invariant, a number that describes a topological space's shape or structure regardless of the way it is bent...
connecting the numbers of vertices, edges, and faces of a convex polyhedron. The story leads from Euler's first observation in 1750 to modern topologyTopologyTopology is a major area of mathematics concerned with properties that are preserved under continuous deformations of objects, such as deformations that involve stretching, but no tearing or gluing...
and the mathematics of William ThurstonWilliam ThurstonWilliam Paul Thurston is an American mathematician. He is a pioneer in the field of low-dimensional topology. In 1982, he was awarded the Fields Medal for his contributions to the study of 3-manifolds...
and Grigori PerelmanGrigori PerelmanGrigori Yakovlevich Perelman is a Russian mathematician who has made landmark contributions to Riemannian geometry and geometric topology.In 1992, Perelman proved the soul conjecture. In 2002, he proved Thurston's geometrization conjecture...
. - 2011: Timothy Gowers, The Princeton Companion to MathematicsThe Princeton Companion to MathematicsThe Princeton Companion to Mathematics is a book, edited by Timothy Gowers with associate editors June Barrow-Green and Imre Leader, and published in 2008 by Princeton University Press . It provides an extensive overview of mathematics, and is noted for the high caliber of the contributors...
(Princeton University Press, 2008). This book provides an overview of modern research mathematics; Gowers edited the contributions of 133 distinguished mathematicians as well as writing many of the entries in it himself.