MAA Writing Awards

Solving the Quartic with a Pencil

by David Auckly

Year of Award: 2008

Award: Lester R. Ford

Publication Information: The American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 114, (2007), pp. 29-39

Summary: The author shows how to find the roots of a fourth degree polynomial equation using the mathematical notion of a “pencil” that has gained prominence in geometry and topology in recent years.

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About the Author: David Auckly earned his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan and then held a postdoctorial position at University of Texas Austin followed by an NSF postdoc at Berkeley. He is now a professor at Kansas State University. His research interests cover a broad range of geometry/topology and overlap with PDE, mathematical physics, and algebraic geometry. He has been very involved in many special educational programs. For example, he helped incorporate mathematics into a residential college at the University of Michigan, and created a unique `Brainstorming and Barnstorming' program at KSU.