The Paul R. Halmos-Lester R. Ford Awards recognize authors of articles of expository excellence published in The American Mathematical Monthly. The awards were established in 1964 as the Ford awards, named for Lester R. Ford, Sr., a distinguished mathematician, editor of the American Mathematical Monthly, 1942-1946, and President of the Mathematical Association of America, 1947-1948. In 2012, the Board of Governors designated these awards as the Paul R. Halmos-Lester R. Ford Awards to recognize the support for the awards provided by the Halmos family and to recognize Paul R. Halmos, a distinguished mathematician and editor of the Monthly, 1982-1986. Up to four of these awards, each $1000, are given annually at the Summer Meeting of the Association. All awards given from 1976 on are for articles that appear in The American Mathematical Monthly. Between 1965 and 1975, Ford awards were given for articles in the Monthlyor Mathematics Magazine.
David A. Cox (Amherst College)
“Why Eisenstein Proved the Eisenstein Criterion and Why Schönemann Discovered It First,”
American Mathematical Monthly, 118:1 (2011), p. 3-21.
Graham Everest and Thomas Ward (University of East Anglia)“
A Repulsion Motif in Diophantine Equations,"
American Mathematical Monthly, 118:7 (2011), p. 584-598.
Peter Sarnak (Princeton University)
“Integral Apollonian Packings,"
American Mathematical Monthly, 118:4 (2011), p. 291-306.
Ravi Vakil (Stanford University)
"The Mathematics of Doodling,"
American Mathematical Monthly, 118:2 (2011), p. 116-129.
James T. Smith
“Definitions and Nondefinability in Geometry,”
American Mathematical Monthly, 117:6 (2010), p. 475-489.
Marvin Jay Greenberg
“Old and New Results in the Foundations of Elementary Plane Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometries,”
American Mathematical Monthly, 117:3 (2010), p. 198-219.
Mark A. Conger and Jason Howald
“A Better Way to Deal the Cards,”
American Mathematical Monthly, 117:8 (2010), p. 686-700.
Alexander Borisov, Mark Dickinson, and Stuart Hastings
“A Congruence Problem for Polyhedra,”
American Mathematical Monthly, 117:3 (2010), p. 232-249.
Aaron Abrams and Skip Garibaldifor
“Finding Good Bets in the Lottery, and Why You Shouldn’t Take Them,”
American Mathematical Monthly, 117:1 (2010), p. 3-26.
Tom M. Apostol and Mamikon A. Mnatsakanian
“New Insight into Cycloidal Areas”
American Mathematical Monthly, 116:7 (2009), pp. 598–611
Judith Grabiner
“Why Did Lagrange 'Prove' the Parallel Postulate?”
American Mathematical Monthly, 116:1 (2009), pp. 3–18
Jerzy Kocik and Andrzej Solecki
“Disentangling a Triangle”
American Mathematical Monthly, 116:3 (2009), pp. 228–237
Bob Palais, Richard Palais, and Stephen Rodi
“A Disorienting Look at Euler?s Theorem on the Axis of a Rotation”
American Mathematical Monthly, 116:10 (2009), pp. 892–909.
Mike Paterson and Uri Zwick
“Overhang”
American Mathematical Monthly, 116:1 (2009), pp. 19–44
Andrew Bashelor, Amy Ksir, and Will Traves
“Enumerative Algebraic Geometry of Conics”
The American Mathematical Monthly, vol.115, no. 8, October 2008, pp. 701–728
Andrew Granville
“Prime Number Patterns”
The American Mathematical Monthly, vol.115, no. 4, April 2008, pp. 279–296
Dan Kalman
“An Elementary Proof of Marden’s Theorem”
The American Mathematical Monthly, vol.115, no. 4, April 2008, pp. 330–338
Mehrdad Khosravi and Michael D. Taylor
“The Wedge Product and Analytic Geometry”
The American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 115, no. 7, August/September 2008, pp. 623–644
David Auckly
“Solving the Quartic with a Pencil”
The American Mathematical Monthly, vol.114, no. 1, January 2007, pp. 29–39.
Andrew Cohen and Tanya Leise
“Nonlinear Oscillators at Our Fingertips”
The American Mathematical Monthly, vol.114, no. 1, January 2007, pp. 14–28.
Thomas C. Hales
“The Jordan Curve Theorem, Formally and Informally”
The American Mathematical Monthly, vol.114, no. 10, December 2007, pp. 882–894.
Katherine Socha
“Circles in Circles: Creating a Mathematical Model of Surface Water Waves”
The American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 114, no. 3, March 2007, pp. 202–216.
Jeffrey C. Lagarias
"Wild and Wooley Numbers"
The American Mathematical Monthly, v. 113, no.2, February 2006,
pp. 97-108.
Lluís Bibiloni, Jaume Paradís, and Pelegrí Viader
"On a Series of Golbach and Euler"
The American Mathematical Monthly, v. 113, no.3, March 2006,
pp. 206-220.
Harold P. Boas
"Reflections on the Arbelos"
The American Mathematical Monthly, v. 113, no.3, March 2006,
pp. 236-249.
Michael J. Mossinghoff
"A $1 Problem"
The American Mathematical Monthly, v. 113, no.5, May 2006,
pp. 385-402.
William Dunham
"Touring the Calculus Gallery"
The American Mathematical Monthly, January 2005, pp. 1-19.
Edward B. Burger
"A Tail of Two Palindromes"
The American Mathematical Monthly, April 2005, pp. 311-321.
Karl Dilcher and Kenneth B. Stolarsky
"A Pascal-Type Triangle Characterizing Twin Primes"
The American Mathematical Monthly, October 2005, pp. 673-681.
Viktor Blåsjö
"The Evolution of the Isoperimetric Problem"
The American Mathematical Monthly, June-July 2005, pp. 526-566
Charles Livingston
“Enhanced Linking Numbers”
The American Mathematical Monthly,
May 2003, pp. 361-385.
R. Michael Range
“Complex Analysis: A Brief Tour into Higher Dimensions”
The American Mathematical Monthly,
February 2003, pp. 89-108.
Ruediger Thiele
“Hilbert’s Twenty-Fourth Problem”
The American Mathematical Monthly
January 2003, pp. 1-24.
Warren P. Johnson
"The Curious History of Faa du Bruno's Formula,"
The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 109, 2002, pp. 217-234.
Sam Northshield
"Associativity of the Secant Method,"
The American Mathematical Monthly,
Vol. 109, 2002, pp. 246-257.
Eleanor Robson
"Words and Pictures: New Light on Plimpton 322,"
The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 109, 2002, pp. 105-120.
Sergio B. Volchan
"What Is a Random Sequence,"
The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 109,
2002, pp. 46-63.
Dirk Huylebrouck
"Similarities in Irrationality Proofs for π, ln2, ζ(2), and ζ(3)"
The American Mathematical Monthly,Vol. 108, March 2001 pp. 222-231
Greg Martin
"Absolutely Abnormal Numbers"
The American Mathematical Monthly,Vol. 108, October 2001, pp. 746-754
David Lindsay Roberts
"Moore's Early Twentieth-Century Program for Reform in Mathematics Education"
Mathematical Monthly,Vol. 108, October 2001, pp. 689-696
E.R. Scheinerman, "When Close is Close Enough" American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 107, No. 6, June 2000, pp. 489-499.
William Terrell, Some fundamental control theory I: Controllability, observability, and duality and Some fundamental control Theory II: Feedback linearization of single input nonlinear systems, Amer. Math. Monthly 106 (1999) 705-719 and 812-828.
Vilmos Totik, A tale of two integrals, Amer. Math. Monthly 106 (1999) 227-240.
Jerry L. Kazdan, Solving equations, an elegant legacy, Amer. Math. Monthly 105 (1998) 1-21.
Bernd Sturmfels, Polynomial equations and convex polytopes, Amer. Math. Monthly 105 (1998) 907-922.
Judith V. Grabiner, Was Newton's calculus a dead end? The continental influence of Maclaurin's Treatise of Fluxions, Amer. Math. Monthly 104 (1997), 393-410.
Bruce Pourciau, Reading the Masters: Newton and the birth of celestial mechanics, Amer. Math. Monthly 104 (1997), 1-19.
A. F. Beardon, Sums of powers of integers, Amer. Math. Monthly 103 (1996), 201-213.
John Brillhart and Patrick Morton, A case study in mathematical research: The Golay-Rudin-Shapiro Sequence, Amer. Math. Monthly 103 (1996), 854-869.
Sheldon Axler, Down with determinants!, Amer. Math. Monthly 102 (1995), 139-154.
John Oprea, Geometry and the Foucault Pendulum, Amer. Math. Monthly 102 (1995), 515-522.
Robert Gray, Georg Cantor and transcendental numbers, Amer. Math. Monthly 101 (1994), 819-832.
Jonathan L. King, Three problems in search of a measure, Amer. Math. Monthly 101 (1994), 609-628.
I. Kleiner and N. Movshovitz-Hadar, The role of paradoxes in the evolution of mathematics, Amer. Math. Monthly 102 (1994), 963-974.
William C. Waterhouse, A counterexample for Germain, Amer. Math. Monthly 101 (1994), 140-150.
Edgar R. Lorch (Reuben Hersh, editor), Szeged in 1934, Amer. Math. Monthly 100 (1993), 219-230.
Leonard Gillman, An axiomatic approach to the integral, Amer. Math. Monthly 100 (1993), 16-25.
Joseph H. Silverman, Taxicabs and sums of two cubes, Amer. Math. Monthly 100 (1993), 331-340.
Dan Velleman and Istvan Szalkai, Versatile coins, Amer. Math. Monthly 100 (1993), 26-33.
Don Knuth, Two notes on notation, Amer. Math. Monthly 99 (1992), 403-422.
Ronald Graham and Frances Yao, A whirlwind tour of computational geometry, Amer. Math. Monthly 97 (1990), 687-701.
Joyce Justicz, Edward R. Scheinerman, and Peter Winkler, Random intervals, Amer. Math. Monthly 97 (1990), 881-889.
Doron Zeilberger, Kathy O'Hara's constructive proof of the unimodality of the Gaussian polynomials, Amer. Math. Monthly 96 (1989), 590-602.
Richard K. Guy, The strong law of small numbers, Amer. Math. Monthly 95 (1988), 697-712.
Stan Wagon, Fourteen proofs of a result about tiling a rectangle, Amer. Math. Monthly 94 (1987), 601-617.
Joan Cleary, Sidney Morris and David Yost, Numerical geometry - numbers for shapes, Amer. Math. Monthly 93 (1986), 260-275.
Howard Hiller, Crystallography and cohomology of groups, Amer. Math. Monthly 93 (1986), 765-779.
Jacob Korevaar, Bieberbach's conjecture and its proof by Louis de Branges, Amer. Math. Monthly 93 (1986), 505-514.
Peter M. Neumann, Book Review of Galois Theory by Harold M. Edwards, Amer. Math. Monthly 93 (1986), 407-411.
Michael E. Taylor, Book Review of The Analysis of Linear Partial Differential Operators, Vols I & II by Lars Hö,Amer. Math. Monthly 92 (1985), 745-749.
Donald G. Saari and John B. Urenko, Newton's method, circle maps, and chaotic motion, Amer. Math. Monthly 91 (1984), 3-17.
Roger Howe, Very basic Lie theory, Amer. Math. Monthly 90 (1983), 600-623.
John Milnor, On the geometry of the Kepler problem, Amer. Math. Monthly 90 (1983), 353-365.
Joel Spencer, Large numbers and unprovable theorems, Amer. Math. Monthly 90 (1983), 365-366.
William C. Waterhouse, Do symmetric problems have symmetric solutions?, Amer. Math. Monthly 90 (1983), 378-387.
Tony Rothman, Genius and Biographers: The Fictionalization of Evariste Galois, Amer. Math. Monthly 89 (1982), 84-106.
Robert S. Strichartz, Radon inversion - variations on a theme, Amer. Math. Monthly 89 (1982) 377-384 and 420-423.
R. Arthur Knoebel, Exponentials reiterated, Amer. Math. Monthly 88 (1981), 235-252.
Bruce H. Pourciau, Modern multiplier rules, Amer. Math. Monthly 87 (1980), 433-452.
Alan H. Schoenfeld, Teaching problem-solving skills, Amer. Math. Monthly 87 (1980), 794-805.
Edward R. Swart, The philosophical implications of the four-color problem, Amer. Math. Monthly 87 (1980), 697-707.
Lawrence A. Zalcman, Offbeat integral geometry, Amer. Math. Monthly 87 (1980), 161-175.
David Gale, The game of Hex and the Brouwer fixed-point theorem, Amer. Math. Monthly 86 (1979), 818-827.
Karel Hrbacek, Nonstandard set theory, Amer. Math. Monthly 86 (1979), 659-677.
Cathleen S. Morawetz, Nonlinear conservation equations, Amer. Math. Monthly 86 (1979), 284-287.
Robert Osserman, Bonnesen-style isoperimetric inequalities, Amer. Math. Monthly 86 (1979), 1-29.
Ned Glick, Breaking records and breaking boards, Amer. Math. Monthly 85 (1978), 2-26.
Kenneth I. Gross, On the evolution of noncommutative harmonic analysis, Amer. Math. Monthly 85 (1978),525-548.
Joseph B. Kruskal and Lawrence A. Shepp, Computerized tomography: the new medical x-ray technology, Amer. Math. Monthly 85 (1978), 420-439.
Louis H. Kauffman and Thomas F. Banchoff, Immersions and Mod-2 quadratic forms, Amer. Math. Monthly 84 (1977), 168-185.
Neil J.A. Sloane, Error correcting codes and invariant theory: new applications of a 19th century technique, Amer. Math. Monthly 84 (1977), 82-107.
Joseph B. Keller, Inverse problems, Amer. Math. Monthly 83 (1976), 107-118.
Donald S. Passman, What is a group ring?, Amer. Math. Monthly 83 (1976), 173-185.
Douglas Wiens, Hideo Wada, Daihachiro Sato and James P. Jones, Diophantine representation of the set of prime numbers, Amer. Math. Monthly 83 (1976), 449-464
William P. Ziemer, William H. Wheeler, S.H. Moolgavkar, Paul R. Halmos, John H. Ewing and William H. Gustafson, American mathematics from 1940 to the day before yesterday, Amer. Math. Monthly 83 (1976), 503-516.
Edward A. Bender and J.R. Goldman, On the applications of Mö inversion in combinatorial analysis, Amer. Math. Monthly 82 (1975), 789-803.
Branko Grü, Venn diagrams and independent families of sets, Amer. Math. Monthly 82 (1975), 12-23.
James E. Humphreys, Representations of SL (2,p), Amer. Math. Monthly 82 (1975), 21-39.
Joseph B. Keller and David W. McLaughlin, The Feynman integral, Amer. Math. Monthly 82 (1975), 451-465.
Justin J. Price, Topics in orthogonal functions, Amer. Math. Monthly 82 (1975), 594-609.
J. Callahan, Singularities and plane maps, Amer. Math. Monthly 81 (1974), 211-240.
Donald E. Knuth, Computer science and its relation to mathematics, Amer. Math. Monthly 81 (1974), 323-343.
Johannes C.C. Nitsche, Plateau's problems and their modern ramifications, Amer. Math. Monthly 81 (1974), 945-968.
Sherman K. Stein, Algebraic tiling, Amer. Math. Monthly 81 (1974), 445-462.
Lawrence Zalcman, Real proofs of complex theorems (and vice versa), Amer. Math. Monthly 81 (1974), 115-137.
Garrett Birkhoff, Current trends in algebra, Amer. Math. Monthly 80 (1973), 760-782.
Martin D. Davis, Hilbert's tenth problem is unsolvable, Amer. Math. Monthly 80 (1973), 233-269.
I.J. Schoenberg, The elementary cases of Landau's problem of inequalities between derivatives, Amer. Math. Monthly 80 (1973), 121-158.
Lynn A. Steen, Highlights in the history of spectral theory, Amer. Math. Monthly 80 (1973), 359-381.
R.J. Wilson, An introduction to matroid theory, Amer. Math. Monthly 80 (1973), 500-525.
Samuel Karlin, Some mathematical models of population genetics, Amer. Math. Monthly 79 (1972), 699-739.
Peter D. Lax, The formation and decay of shock waves, Amer. Math. Monthly 79 (1972), 227-241.
Thomas L. Saaty, Thirteen colorful variations on Guthrie's four-color conjecture, Amer. Math. Monthly 79 (1972) 2-43.
Lynn A. Steen, Conjectures and counterexamples in metrization theory, Amer. Math. Monthly 79 (1972), 113-132.
R.L. Wilder, History in the mathematics curriculum: Its status, equality, and function, Amer. Math. Monthly 79 (1972), 479-495.
Paul M. Cohn, Rings of fractions, Amer. Math. Monthly 78 (1971), 596-615.
Frederick Cunningham, Jr., The Kakeya problem for simply connected and for star-shaped Sets, Amer. Math. Monthly 78 (1971), 114-129.
W.J. Ellison, Waring's problem, Amer. Math. Monthly 78 (1971) 10-36.
Leon Henkin, Mathematical foundations for mathematics, Amer. Math. Monthly 78 (1971), 463-487.
Victor Klee, What is a convex set?, Amer. Math. Monthly 78 (1971), 616-631.
George Forsythe, Pitfalls in computation, or why a math book isn't enough, Amer. Math. Monthly 77 (1970), 931-956.
Paul R. Halmos, Finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, Amer. Math. Monthly 77 (1970), 457-464.
Eric Langford, A problem in geometric probability, Math. Mag. 43 (1970), 237-244.
Peter V. O'Neil, Ulam's conjecture and graph reconstructions, Amer. Math. Monthly 77 (1970), 35-43.
Olga Taussky, Sums of squares, Amer. Math. Monthly 77 (1970), 805-830.
Ralph P. Boas, Inequalities for the derivatives of polynomials, Math. Mag. 42 (1969), 165-174.
William A. Coppel, J.B. Fourier - on the occasion of his two hundredth birthday, Amer. Math. Monthly 76 (1969), 468-483.
Norman Levinson, A motivated account of an elementary proof of the prime number theorem, Amer. Math. Monthly 76 (1969), 225-245.
John Milnor, A problem in cartography, Amer. Math. Monthly 76 (1969), 1101-1112.
Ivan Niven, Formal power series, Amer. Math. Monthly 76 (1969), 871-889.
George Forsythe, What to do till the computer scientist comes, Amer. Math. Monthly 75 (1968), 454-462.
Marcel F. Neuts, Are many 1-1 functions on the positive integers onto?, Math. Mag. 41 (1968), 103-109.
Pierre Samuel, Unique Factorization, Amer. Math. Monthly 75 (1968), 945-952.
Hassler Whitney, The mathematics of physical quantities, Amer. Math. Monthly 75 (1968), 115-138, 227-256.
Albert Wilansky, Spectral decomposition of matrices for high school students, Math. Mag. 41 (1968), 51-59.
W.F. Newns, Functional Dependence, Amer. Math. Monthly 74 (1967), 911-920.
Daniel Pedoe, On a theorem in Geometry, Amer. Math. Monthly 74 (1967), 627-640.
Keith L. Phillips, The maximal theorems of Hardy and Littlewood, Amer. Math. Monthly 74 (1967), 648-660.
F.V. Waugh and Margaret W. Maxfield, Side-and-Diagonal numbers, Math. Mag. 40 (1967), 74-83.
Hans J. Zassenhaus, On the fundamental theorem of algebra, Amer. Math. Monthly 74 (1967), 485-497.
D.R. Fulkerson, Flow networks and combinatorial operations research, Amer. Math. Monthly 73 (1966), 115-138.
Mark Kac, Can one hear the shape of a drum?, Amer. Math. Monthly 73 (1966), Part II, 1-23.
M. Zuhair Nashed, Some remarks on variations and differentials, Amer. Math. Monthly 73 (1966), Part II, 63-76.
Paul B. Yale, Automorphisms of the complex numbers, Math. Mag. 39 (1966), 135-141.
Peter D. Lax, Numerical solutions of partial differential equations, Amer. Math. Monthly 72 (1965), Part II, 78-84.
Marvin Marcus and Henry Minc, Permanents, Amer. Math. Monthly 72 (1965), 577-591.
Louis Brand, A division algebra for sequences and its associated operational calculus, Amer. Math. Monthly 71 (1964) 719-728.
Robert G. Kuller, Coin tossing, probability, and the Weierstrass approximation theorem, Math. Mag. 37 (1964), 262-267.
R. Duncan Luce, The mathematics used in mathematical psychology, Amer. Math. Monthly 71 (1964), 364-378.
Hartley Rogers, Jr., Information theory, Math. Mag. 37 (1964), 63-78.
Elmer Tolsted, An elementrary derivation of Cauchy, Holder, and Minkowski inequalities from Young's Inequality, Math. Mag. 37 (1964), 2-12.