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Judith Grabiner Wins MAA's Ford Award for the Fourth Time


October 28, 2010


At this year's MathFest, Judith Grabiner, received the MAA's Lester R. Ford Award for the fourth time in her career.

The Lester R. Ford Award, established in 1964, is given to authors of superlative expository articles published in The American Mathematical Monthly. The award is named for Lester R. Ford, Sr., a distinguished mathematician, editor of The American Mathematical Monthly, and former president of the MAA.

Grabiner, who is the Flora Sanborn Pitzer Professor of Mathematics at Pitzer College, in Claremont, Calif., is the only mathematician to have won the award this often. Having garnered the prize in 1984, 1998, and 2005, Grabiner won it most recently for her article, "Why did Lagrange 'Prove' the Parallel Postulate?" (The American Mathematical Monthly, January 2009, pp. 3-18).

"Generations of Pitzer students have been fortunate to be a student of Professor Grabiner's, and it is utterly fitting that she be recognized for her excellence in scholarship with the Lester R. Ford Award," said college President Laura Skandera Trombley.

Grabiner is also the author of The Origins of Cauchy's Rigorous CalculusCalculus as Algebra: J.-L. Lagrange, 1736-1813; and most recently, A Historian Looks Back: The Calculus as Algebra and Selected Writing.

Id: 
981
Start Date: 
Thursday, October 28, 2010