• About the MAA
• History of the MAA
• MAA Presidents
• Get Involved
  • Join the MAA
  • Support the MAA
• Governance
  • Board of Governors
  • Executive Committee
  • Committees
  • Contact MAA Secretary
  • Available MAA Positions
  • MAA Sections
  • SIGMAAs - Special Interest Groups
  • Department Liaisons Program
  • Student Chapters
• Governance Documents
  • Bylaws
  • Board of Governors Handbook
  • Strategic Planning Reports (Members Only)
  • MAA Financial Information (Members Only)
• Policies and Procedures
• Public Affairs
• News and Features
• Guidelines for the Profession
• Awards
  • MAA Awards
• Employment Opportunities
• Contact the MAA
  • Contact Us
  • Staff Directory
  • Directions to MAA Headquarters

The Mathematical Association of America's Chauvenet Prize

The Chauvenet Prize, consisting of a prize of $1,000 and a certificate, is awarded at the Annual Meeting of the Association to the author of an outstanding expository article on a mathematical topic. First awarded in 1925, the Prize is named for William Chauvenet, a professor of mathematics at the United States Naval Academy. It was established through a gift in 1925 from J.L. Coolidge, then MAA President. Winners of the Chauvenet Prize are among the most distinguished of mathematical expositors.

Regulations governing the Association’s award of the Chauvenet Prize

Archive of Chauvenet Prize-winning Articles

List of Recipients

Robert Ghrist. "Barcodes: The persistent topology of data." Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 45 (2008) 61–75.

Dennis DeTurck, Herman Gluck, Daniel Pomerleano, and David Shea Vela-Vick, “The Four Vertex Theorem and Its Converse,” Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 54 (2007), no. 2, 192-207. Read more.

Bjorn Poonen, "Undecidability in number theory," Notices Amer. Math. Soc., 55 (2008), no. 3, 344-350.

Brian J. McCartin, “e: The Master of All,” The Mathematical Intelligencer, 28 (2006), no. 2, 10–21.

Harold P. Boas, “Reflections on the Arbelos,” American Mathematical Monthly, 113 (2006), pp. 236-249.

Andrew Granville, "It is easy to determine whether a given integer is prime," Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 42, 2005, pp. 3-38.

Andrew J. Simoson, "The Gravity of Hades," Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 75, No. 5, December 2002, pp. 335-350.

Florian Pfender and Günter M. Ziegler, "Kissing Numbers, Sphere Packings, and Some Unexpected Proofs," Notices of the AMS, September 2004, pp. 873-883.

John Stillwell, “The Story of the 120-Cell,” Notices of the AMS, January 2001, pp. 17-24.

Edward B. Burger, “Diophantine Olympics and World Champions: Polynomials and Primes Down Under,” The American Mathematical Monthly November, 2000, no. 9, pp. 822-829.

Thomas C. Hales, "Cannonballs and Honeycombs", Notices of AMS, April 2000, vol. 47, no. 4, 440-449.

Ellen Gethner, Stan Wagon, and Brian Wick, A Stroll through the Gaussian Primes, American Mathematical Monthly 105 (1998), 327-337.

Carolyn S. Gordon and David L. Webb, You can't hear the shape of a drum, American Scientist 84 (1996), 46-55.

Don Zagier, Newman's short proof of the prime number theorem, Amer. Math. Monthly 104 (1997), 705-708.

Michael I. Rosen, Niels Hendrik Abel and equations of the fifth degree, Amer. Math. Monthly 102 (1995), 495-505.

Alan Edelman and Eric Kostlan, How many zeros of a random polynomial are real?, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 32 (1995), 1-37.

Tom Hawkins, The birth of Lie's theory of groups, Math. Intelligencer 16 (1994), 6-17.

Joan Birman, New Points of View in Knot Theory, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.), 28 (1993), 253-287.

Donald G. Saari, A Visit to the Newtonian N-body Problem Via Elementary Complex Variables, Amer. Math. Monthly 97 (1990), 105-119.

Barry Mazur, Number Theory as Gadfly, Amer. Math. Monthly 98 (1991), 593-610.

David H. Bailey, Jonathan M. Borwein and Peter B. Borwein, Ramanujan, Modular Equations, and Approximations to Pi, or, How to Compute One Billion Digits of Pi, Amer. Math. Monthly 96 (1989), 201-219.

Steven G. Krantz, What is Several Complex Variables?, Amer. Math. Monthly 94 (1987), 236-256.

W.B. Raymond Lickorish and Kenneth C. Millett, The New Polynomial Invariants of Knots and Links, Math. Mag. 61 (1988), 2-23.

David Allen Hoffman, The Computer-Aided Discovery of New Embedded Minimal Surfaces, Math. Intelligencer 9 (1987), 8-21.

Jacob Korevaar, Ludwig Bieberbach's Conjecture and Its Proof by Louis de Branges, Amer. Math. Monthly 93 (1986), 505-514.

Steve Smale, On the Efficiency of Algorithms in Analysis, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 13 (1985), 87-121.

James H. Wilkinson, The Perfidious Polynomial, Studies in Numerical Analysis, 1-28, MAA Stud. Math., 24, Math. Assoc. America, Washington, DC, 1984.

George Miel, Of Calculations Past and Present: The Archimedean Algorithm, Amer. Math. Monthly 90 (1983), 17-35.

Carl Pomerance, Recent Developments in Primality Testing, Math. Intelligencer 3 (1981), 97-105.

R. Arthur Knoebel, Exponentials Reiterated, Amer. Math. Monthly 88 (1981), 235-252.

No award was given.

No award was given.

Kenneth I. Gross, On the Evolution of Noncommutative Harmonic Analysis, Amer. Math. Monthly 85 (1978), 525-548.

Heinz Bauer, Approximation and Abstract Boundaries, Amer. Math. Monthly 85 (1978), 632-647.

Neil J.A. Sloane, Error-Correcting Codes and Invariant Theory: New Applications of a Nineteenth-Century Technique, Amer. Math. Monthly 84 (1977), 82-107.

Shreeram S. Abhyankar, Historical Ramblings in Algebraic Geometry and Related Algebra, Amer. Math. Monthly 83 (1976), 409-448.

W. Gilbert Strang, Piecewise Polynomials and the Finite Element Method, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 79 (1973), 1128-1137.

Lawrence Zalcman, Real Proofs of Complex Theorems (and vice versa), Amer. Math. Monthly 81 (1974), 115-137.

M.D. Davis and Reuben Hersh, Hilbert's 10th Problem, Scientific American 229, (1973), no. 5, 84-91.

Peter D. Lax, The Formation and Decay of Shock Waves, Amer. Math. Monthly 79 (1972), 227-241.

C.D. Olds, The Simple Continued Fraction Expansion of e, Amer. Math. Monthly 77 (1970), 968-974.

Jean Francois Treves, On Local Solvability of Linear Partial Differential Equations, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 76 (1970), 552-571.

Norman Levinson, A Motivated Account of an Elementary Proof of the Prime Number Theorem, Amer. Math. Monthly 76 (1969), 225-245.

Shiing Shen Chern, Curves and Surfaces in Euclidean Space, Studies in Global Geometry and Analysis, 16-56, MAA Stud. Math., 4, Math. Assoc. America, Washington, DC, 1967.

Mark Kac, Can One Hear the Shape of a Drum?, Amer. Math. Monthly 73 (1966), 1-23.

Guido Weiss, Harmonic Analysis, Studies in Real and Complex Analysis, 124-178, MAA Stud. Math., 3, Math. Assoc. America, Washington, DC, 1965.

Jack K. Hale & Joseph P. LaSalle, "Differential Equations: Linearity vs. Nonlinearity," SIAM Review 5 (1963), 249-272.

Leon Henkin, "Are Logic and Mathematics Identical?," Science 138 (1962), 788-794.

Philip J. Davis, "Leonhard Euler's Integral: An Historical Profile of the Gamma Function," Amer. Math. Monthly 66 (1959), 849-869.

Cornelius Lanczos, "Linear Systems in Self-Adjoint Form," Amer. Math. Monthly 65 (1958), 665-679.

R.H. Bruck, "Recent Advances in the Foundations of Euclidean Plane Geometry," Amer. Math. Monthly 62 (1955), 2-17.

E.J. McShane, "Partial Orderings and Moore-Smith Limits," Amer. Math. Monthly 59 (1952), 1-11.

Mark Kac, "Random Walk and the Theory of Brownian Motion," Amer. Math. Monthly 54 (1947), 369-391.

Paul R. Halmos, "The Foundations of Probability," Amer. Math. Monthly 51 (1944), 493-510.

R.H. Cameron, "Some Introductory Exercises in the Manipulation of Fourier Transforms," Nat. Math. Mag. 15 (1941), 331-356.

Saunders MacLane, "Modular Fields," Amer. Math. Monthly 47 (1940), 67-84, and "Some Recent Advances in Algebra," Amer. Math. Monthly 46 (1939), 3-19.

G.T. Whyburn, "On the Structure of Continua," Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 42 (1936), 49-73.

Dunham Jackson, "The Convergence of Fourier Series," Amer. Math. Monthly 41 (1934), 67-84; "Series of Orthogonal Polynomials," Annals of Mathematics 34 (1933), 527-545; "Orthogonal Trigonometric Sums," Annals of Mathematics 34 (1933), 799-814.

G.H. Hardy, "An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers," Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 35 (1929), 778-818.

T.H. Hildebrandt, "The Borel Theorem and Its Generalizations," Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 32 (1926), 423-474.

G.A. Bliss, "Algebraic Functions and Their Divisors," Annals of Mathematics 26 (1924), 95-124.