Keith J. Devlin is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

 and popular science

Popular science

Popular science, sometimes called literature of science, is interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is broad-ranging, often written by scientists as well as journalists, and is presented in many...

 writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

. He has lived in the USA since 1987 and has dual American-British citizenship.

Biography

Devlin earned a B.Sc. (Special) 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...

 at Kings College London (1965–68) and a Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in Mathematics at the University of Bristol

University of Bristol

The University of Bristol is a public research university located in Bristol, United Kingdom. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876.The University is...

 (1968–71) under the supervision of Frederick Rowbottom

Frederick Rowbottom

Frederick Rowbottom was a British logician and mathematician. The large cardinal notion of Rowbottom cardinals is named after him.-Biography:...

. He is co-founder and Executive Director of Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

's Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute (H-STAR), a co-founder of Stanford Media X university-industry research partnership program, and a Senior Researcher in the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI). He is a commentator on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition

Weekend Edition

Weekend Edition is the name given to a set of American radio news magazines produced and distributed by National Public Radio . It is the weekend counterpart to Morning Edition. It consists of Weekend Edition Saturday and Weekend Edition Sunday , each of which airs for two hours, from 8 a.m. to 10...

 Saturday, where he is known as "The Math Guy."

As of 2008, he is the author of 28 books. Several of his books are aimed at an audience of the general public, as opposed to much academic work.

His recent research work has focused on the development of new tools and protocols to assist intelligence analysis and the development and use of videogames in mathematics education.

Devlin is also creator of the concept "soft mathematics," introduced in the final chapter of his book Goodbye, Descartes.

His website at Stanford provides extensive up-to-date information.

Research publications

[First proof of Jensen's covering theorem

Jensen's covering theorem

In set theory, Jensen's covering theorem states that if 0# does not exist then every uncountable set of ordinals is contained in a constructible set of the same cardinality. Informally this conclusion says that the constructible universe is close to the universe of all sets. The first proof ...

; Keith J. Devlin is credited as Keith I. Devlin in the paper.]

Awards

• Joint Policy Board for Mathematics Communications Award
• In 2007 he received Wonderfest's
  Wonderfest
  Wonderfest is a nonprofit California corporation dedicated to informal science education. Wonderfest seeks to inspire and nurture a deep sense of wonder about the world. Through provocative public discourse about science, Wonderfest aspires to stimulate curiosity, promote careful reasoning,...
  
   Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization.
• 2004 International Pythagoras Prize in Mathematics, in the category Best Expository Text in the Mathematical Sciences for the Italian translation of The Millennium Problems

External links

• Devlin's website at Stanford
• Devlin's Angle — column at 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;...
  
  
• Radio interview on Philosophy Talk
  Philosophy Talk
  Philosophy Talk is a talk radio program co-hosted by John Perry and Ken Taylor, who are professors at Stanford University. The show is also available as a podcast, available for purchase. The program deals both with fundamental problems of philosophy and with the works of famous philosophers,...
  
  
• The Unfinished Game, Google Authors talk, 9 October 2008.