MAA Writing Awards

The Carl B. Allendoerfer Award, established in 1976, is made to authors of expository articles published in Mathematics Magazine.  Carl B. Allendoerfer, a distinguished mathematician at the University of Washington, served as president of the Mathematical Association of America, 1959-60.  This is an award of $500.  Up to two of these awards are given annually at the Summer Meeting of the Association.

 

Recipients in 2009

Vesna Stojanoska and Orlin Stoytchev

Touching the Z₂ in Three-Dimensional Rotations

Mathematics Magazine, vol. 81, no. 5, December 2008, pp. 345-357

 

Jeff Suzuki

A Brief History of Impossibility

Mathematics Magazine, vol. 81, no. 1, February 2008, pp. 27-38

Recipients in 2008

Eugene Boman, Richard Brazier, and Derek Seiple
Mom! There's an Astroid in My Closet!
Mathematics Magazine, vol. 80 (2007), pp. 104-111

Chris Christensen
Polish Mathematicians Finding Patterns in Enigma Messages
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 80 (2007), pp. 247-273

Recipients in 2007

Carl V. Lutzer
Hammer Juggling, Rotational Instability, and Eigenvalues
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 79 (2006), pp. 243-250

Saul Stahl
The Evolution of the Normal Distribution
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 79 (2006), pp. 96-113

Recipients in 2006

Robb T. Koether and John K. Osinach, Jr.
Outwitting the Lying Oracle
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 78 (2005), pp. 98-109

Jeff Suzuki
The Lost Calculus (1637-1670): Tangency and Optimization without Limits
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 78 (2005), pp. 339-353

Recipients in 2005

Roger B. Eggleton and William P. Galvin
Upper Bounds on the Sum of Principal Divisors of an Integer
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 77 (2004), pp. 190-200

Recipients in 2004

Charles I. Delman and Gregory Galperin
A Tale of Three Circles
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 76 (2003), pp. 15-32

Recipients in 2003

Dan Kalman
Doubly Recursive Multivariate Automatic Differentiation
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 75 (2002), pp. 187-202

Ezra Brown
The Many Names of (7,3,1)
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 75 (2002), pp. 83-94

Recipients in 2002

Mark McKinzie and Curtis Tuckey
Higher Trigonometry, Hyperreal Numbers, and Euler's Analysis of Infinities
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 74 (2001), pp. 339-368

Recipients in 2001

Raphael Falk Jones and Janice L. Pearce
A Postmodern View of Fractions and the Reciprocals of Fermat Primes
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 73 (2000), pp. 83-97

James N. Brawner
Dinner, Dancing, and Tennis, Anyone?
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 73 (2000), pp. 29-36

Recipients in 2000

Donald Teets and Karen Whitehead
The Discovery of Ceres: How Gauss Became Famous
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 72 (1999), pp. 83-91

Recipients in 1999

Victor Klee and John R. Reay
A Surprising but Easily Proved Geometric Decomposition Theorem
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 71 (1998), pp. 3-11

Donald G. Saari and Fabrice Valognes
Geometry, Voting, and Paradoxes
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 71 (1998), pp. 243-259

Recipients in 1998

Dan Kalman, Robert Mena, and Shahriar Shahriari
Variations on an Irrational Theme-Geometry, Dynamics, Algebra
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 70 (1997), pp. 93-104

Recipients in 1997

Colm Mulcahy
Plotting and Scheming with Wavelets
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 69 (1996), pp. 323-343

Lin Tan
The Group of Rational Points on the Unit Circle
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 69 (1996), pp. 163-171

Recipients in 1996

Judith Grabiner
Descartes and Problem-Solving
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 68 (1995), pp. 83-97

Daniel J. Velleman and Gregory S. Call
Permutations and Combination Locks
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 68 (1995), pp. 243-253

Recipients in 1995

Lee Badger
Lazzarini's Lucky Approximation of pi
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 67 (1994), pp. 83-91

Tristan Needham
The Geometry of Harmonic Functions
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 67 (1994), pp. 92-108

Recipients in 1994

Joan Hutchinson
Coloring Ordinary Maps, Maps of Empires, and Maps of the Moon
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 66 (1993), pp. 211-226

Recipients in 1993

Xun-cheng Huang
From Intermediate Value Theorem to Chaos
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 65 (1992), pp. 91-103

Recipients in 1992

Israel Kleiner
Rigor and Proof in Mathematics: A Historical Perspective
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 64 (1991), pp. 291-314

Gulbank D. Chakerian and David E. Logothetti
Cube Slices, Pictorial Triangles, and Probability
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 64 (1991), pp. 219-241

Recipients in 1991

Ranjan Roy
The Discovery of the Series Formula for p by Leibniz, Gregory, and Nilakantha
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 63 (1990), pp. 291-306

Recipients in 1990

Thomas Archibald
Connectivity and Smoke-Rings: Green's Second Identity in Its First Fifty Years
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 62 (1989), pp. 219-232

Fan K. Chung, Martin Gardner, and Ronald L. Graham
Steiner Trees on a Checkerboard
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 62 (1989), pp. 83-96

Recipients in 1989

W. B. Raymond Lickorish and Kenneth C. Millett
The New Polynomial Invariants of Knots and Links
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 61 (1988), pp. 3-23

Judith V. Grabiner
The Centrality of Mathematics in the History of Western Thought
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 61 (1988), pp. 220-230

Recipients in 1988

Bart Braden
Polya's Geometric Picture of Complex Contour Integrals
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 60 (1987), pp. 321-327

Steven Galovich
Products of Sines and Cosines
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 60 (1987), pp. 105-113

Recipients in 1987

Israel Kleiner
The Evolution of Group Theory: A Brief Survey
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 59 (1986), pp. 195-215

Paul Zorn
The Bieberbach Conjecture
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 59 (1986), pp. 131-148

Recipients in 1986

Bart Braden
Design of an Oscillating Sprinkler
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 58 (1985), pp. 29-38

Saul Stahl
The Other Map Coloring Theorem
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 58 (1985), pp. 131-145

Recipients in 1985

Frederick S. Gass
Constructive Ordinal Notation Systems
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 57 (1984), pp. 131-141

Philip D. Straffin, Jr. and Bernard Grofman
Parliamentary Coalitions: A Tour of Models
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 57 (1984), pp. 259-274

Recipients in 1984

Judith V. Grabiner
The Changing Concept of Change: The Derivative from Fermat to Weierstrass
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 56 (1983), pp. 195-206

Recipients in 1983

Donald O. Koehler
Mathematics and Literature
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 55 (1982), pp. 81-95

Clifford H. Wagner
A Generic Approach to Iterative Methods
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 55 (1982), pp. 259-273

Recipients in 1982

J. Ian Richards
Continued Fractions without Tears
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 54 (1981), pp. 163-171

Marjorie Senechal
Which Tetrahedra Fill Space?
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 54 (1981), pp. 227-243

Recipients in 1981

Stephen B. Maurer
The King Chicken Theorems
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 53 (1980), pp. 67-80

Donald E. Sanderson
Advanced Plane Topology from an Elementary Standpoint
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 53 (1980), pp. 81-89

Recipients in 1980

Victor L. Klee, Jr.
Some Unsolved Problems in Plane Geometry
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 52 (1979), pp. 131-145

Ernst Snapper
The Three Crises in Mathematics: Logicism, Intuitionism, and Formalism
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 52 (1979), pp. 207-216

Recipients in 1979

Bruce C. Berndt
Ramanujan's Notebooks
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 51 (1978), pp. 147-164

Doris Schattschneider
Tiling the Plane with Congruent Pentagons
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 51 (1978), pp. 29-44

Recipients in 1978

Geoffry C. Shephard and Branko Grunbaum
Tilings by Regular Polygons
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 50 (1977), pp. 227-247

David A. Smith
Human Population Growth: Stability or Explosion?
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 50 (1977), pp. 186-197

Recipients in 1977

Joseph A. Gallian
The Search for Finite Simple Groups
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 49 (1976), pp. 163-180

B.L. van der Waerden
Hamilton's Discovery of Quaternions
Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 49 (1976), pp. 227-234