Euler Book Prize

The Euler Book Prize is an award named after Swiss mathematician and physicist Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) 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.[1]

The prize was founded in 2005 with funds provided by mathematician Paul Halmos (1916–2006) 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.[1][2]

Winners

• 2007: John Derbyshire, Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics (Joseph Henry Press, 2003).[1][2] The main subject of this popular-audience book is the Riemann hypothesis, concerning the location of the zeros of the Riemann zeta function, and its application to the distribution of prime numbers.[3][4] Due to a miscommunication, Derbyshire missed the award ceremony.[5]
• 2008: Benjamin Yandell, The Honors Class: Hilbert's Problems and Their Solvers (AK Peters, 2002).[1] This book intertwines the stories of the solutions to Hilbert's problems with the biographies of its solvers. The award was given posthumously to Yandell, who died in 2004.[6]
• 2009: Siobhan Roberts, King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry (Walker and Company, 2006).[1] This biography of Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter also describes the history of geometry and Coxeter's contributions to the field.[7][8]
• 2010: David S. Richeson, Euler’s Gem: The Polyhedron Formula and the Birth of Topology (Princeton University Press, 2008).[1] Richeson relates the history of Euler's formula V − E + F = 2 connecting the numbers of vertices, edges, and faces of a convex polyhedron. The story leads from Euler's first observation in 1750 to modern topology and the mathematics of William Thurston and Grigori Perelman.[9]
• 2011: Timothy Gowers, The Princeton Companion to Mathematics (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.[10]
• 2012: Daina Taimiņa, Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes, A. K. Peters 2009
• 2013: Persi Diaconis, Ronald Graham, Magical Mathematics . The mathematical ideas that animate great magic tricks, Princeton University Press 2011
• 2014: Steven Strogatz, The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012
• 2015: Edward Frenkel, Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality, Basic Books, 2013
• 2016: Jordan Ellenberg, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, Penguin Press, 2014
• 2017: Ian Stewart, In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World, Basic Books, New York, 2012 [11] [12]
• 2018: Matt Parker, Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2014)
• 2019: Cathy O'Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction, Crown, 2016 [13]
• 2020: Tim Chartier, Math Bytes: Google Bombs, Chocolate-Covered Pi, and Other Cool Bits in Computing, Princeton University Press, 2014[1]

See also

• Beckenbach Book Prize
• List of mathematics awards

References

1. Euler Book Prize.
2. Siegel, Martha J. (February 2007), "JMM 2007: Report of the MAA Secretary" (PDF), Focus, Mathematical Association of America: 8–10.
3. Gowers, Timothy (October 9, 2003), "Prime time for mathematics", Nature, 425 (562), doi:10.1038/425562a.
4. Euler Prize citation, MAA, 2007, retrieved 2011-02-01.
5. Derbyshire, John (January 8, 2007), "Big Easy", National Review.
6. Euler prize citation for Yandell, MAA, 2008, retrieved 2011-02-01.
7. Ellenberg, Jordan (September 6, 2006), "Symmetry in Motion", Washington Post.
8. January 2009 Prizes and Award, Mathematical Association of America, retrieved 2011-02-01.
9. January 2010 Prizes and Awards, American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2011-02-01.
10. January 2011 Prizes and Awards, American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2011-02-01.
11. Prize Booklet 2017, page 10
12. Laureate 2017
13. JMM Prizebook 2019