Griffith Baley Price, 1957-1958 MAA President

Born: March 14, 1905, Brookhaven, Mississippi
Died: November 7, 2006

Griffith Baley Price was a mathematics professor at the University of Kansas. He was instrumental in several mathematical organizations and programs.

Presidency: 1957-1958

At the December 29, 1956, annual meeting, Price was elected president and made a report as chair of the Committee to Study the Activities of the Association. Allendoerfer, McShane, and Tucker also gave talks at the meeting.

In 1958, Price was a member of the group that organized the School Mathematics Study Group. He served on its advisory board and writing groups.

Education and Career

1925 Mississippi College, A.B.
1928 Harvard University, M.A.
1932 Harvard University, Ph.D.

Price joined the University of Kansas (KU) in 1937. An early believer in the potential pedagogical use of technology, he was largely responsible for the 1956 purchase of KU's first computer. Price chaired the mathematics department from 1959 to 1970. He retired in 1975 but continued publishing mathematical monographs and works on the history of mathematics. KU now offers a G. Baley Price Award for Excellence in Teaching and a G. Baley Price Professorship in Mathematics.

The MAA awarded Price the Gung and Hu Distinguished Service to Mathematics Award in 1970. The citation noted a pattern in his work:

Baley Price has many times conceived what ought to be done, described it lucidly in writing, helped to organize a team to do it and found finances for it. Then he has pitched in as a writer or teacher in the production. Afterwards, if more work was necessary to put the results into use, Price has been there to see it through.

This pattern was evident in Price's work in creating and developing the Mathematical Reviews, the Slaught Memorial Papers, the Hedrick Lectures, the NSF Summer Institutes Program, the Committee on the Undergraduate Program in Mathematics, the School Mathematics Study Group, and the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences.

In the MAA, Price also served for many years on the board of governors and on the finance committee.