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Pólya Lectureship

George Pólya embodied the high quality of exposition which the Mathematical Association of America seeks to encourage. To further this goal, the Board of Governors of the Association hereby creates the George Pólya Lectureship. This Lectureship will be held by an individual representing the high standards set by George Pólya. Each Section will be entitled to a Pólya Lectureship approximately every five years.

Sections are eligible to have a Pólya Lecturer speak at a Section meeting once every five years, with all travel expenses borne by the MAA. A new Pólya Lecturer will be appointed every year, with a term of two academic years. The first year of the term overlaps the term of the previous Pólya Lecturer and the second year overlaps the term of the next Pólya Lecturer. Sections will be eligible during the academic year, once every five years, on a rotating basis.

Each year, the Polya lecturers will be notified as to which sections are eligible for a visit during that year. Sections should contact the lecturer directly to coordinate a visit.

Following is the rotation for Pólya Lecturer eligibility:

It is customary for the section to waive any registration, banquet and social fees. The Pólya Lecturer will pay his/her own travel expenses and will be reimbursed by the national organization. Should, by accident, a section invite two Polya speakers, it will be asked to reimburse the MAA for the more expensive trip.

We ask that a section be a thoughtful host. In the crush of meeting details and the distribution of duties amongst section officers and local arrangements faculty, it is sometimes easy for responsibilities to fall through the cracks. Please be sure to consider your visitors' arrangements for travel, lodging, meals, local transportation and registration. In the days of "Saturday night stayovers", it is especially cordial that the section consider Saturday evening dining arrangements. At least give visiting speakers options ("a ride would be great" or "I'll catch a cab") for airport pickups, get-togethers at meals, etc. Be sure to communicate fully about the schedule of events at your meeting.

2009 - 2010 Pólya Lecturers

Louis H. Kauffman is Professor of Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Kauffman's primary interests are in topology, particularly knot theory and its relationships with physics. His discoveries include a state sum model for the Alexander-Conway Polynomial, the bracket state sum model for the Jones polynomial, the Kauffman polynomial and Virtual Knot Theory. Kauffman is the founding editor, and Editor-In-Chief, of the Journal of Knot Theory and its Ramifications. He is the author of Formal Knot Theory (Dover Publications 2007), On Knots (Princeton University Press 1987), and Knots and Physics (World Scientific Pub. Co. 1991,2001,2003)

Judy Walker is Professor and Graduate Chair at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her main research interests are in algebraic coding theory, and her current work focuses primarily on codes on graphs. She has also studied connections between coding theory and both algebraic geometry and number theory. She is co-founder of the Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics and an editor for the Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra, Advances in Mathematics of Communications and the Rose-Hulman Undergraduate Math Journal.

2010 - 2011 Pólya Lecturers

Judy Walker, Professor and Graduate Chair at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Erik Demaine is Associate Professor in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests range throughout algorithms, from data structures for improving web searches to the geometry of understanding how proteins fold to the computational difficulty of playing games. He received a MacArthur Fellowship (2003) as a “computational geometer tackling and solving difficult problems related to folding and bending – moving readily between the theoretical and the playful, with a keen eye to revealing the former in the latter.” He appears in the recent origami documentary Between the Folds (2008). Erik cowrote a book about the theory of folding, together with Joseph O'Rourke, called Geometric Folding Algorithms: Linkages, Origami, Polyhedra (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and a book about the computational complexity of games, together with Robert Hearn, called Games, Puzzles, and Computation (A K Peters, 2009). His interests span the connections between mathematics and art, particularly sculpture and performance, including curved origami sculptures in the permanent collection of Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.

View the list of past Pólya Lecturers

Questions about Sections? | email Kerry Sullivan at ksullivan@maa.org