Jordan Ellenberg

Jordan Stuart Ellenberg (born 1971) is an American mathematician working as a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.^[1] His research covers a wide variety of topics within arithmetic geometry. He received both the A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he was a two-time Putnam Fellow.

In addition to his research articles, he has authored a novel, The Grasshopper King,^[2] which was a finalist for the 2004 Young Lions Fiction Award;^[3] the "Do the Math" column in Slate;^[4] a non-fiction book, How Not to Be Wrong;^[5][6][7] and various articles on mathematical topics in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Wired, Seed, and The Believer.

In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.^[8]

Child prodigy

Ellenberg was a child prodigy who taught himself to read at the age of 2 by watching Sesame Street.^[9] His mother discovered his ability one day while she was driving on the Capital Beltway when her toddler informed her: "The sign says `Bethesda is to the right.'" In second grade, he helped his teenaged babysitter with her math homework. When he was seven, Ellenberg was discovered by Eric Walstein, a teacher at the nearby Montgomery Blair High School. Walstein took Ellenberg under his wing and oversaw his mathematical development. By fourth grade, he was participating in high school competitions (such as the American Regions Mathematics League) as a member of the Montgomery County math team. And by eighth grade, he had started college-level work. He was part of the Johns Hopkins University Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth longitudinal cohort. He scored a perfect 800 on the math portion and a 680 on the verbal portion of the SAT-I exam at the age of 12.^[10] When he was in eighth grade, he took honors calculus classes at the University of Maryland; when he was a junior at Winston Churchill High School, he earned a perfect score of 1600 on the SAT; and as a high school senior, he placed second in the national Westinghouse Science Talent Search. He participated in the International Mathematical Olympiads three times, winning two gold medals in 1987 and 1989 (with perfect scores) and a silver medal in 1988.^[11] He was also a two-time Putnam fellow^[12] (1990 and 1992) while at Harvard.

Bibliography

Nonfiction

• How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking (Penguin, 2014) ISBN 978-1594205224 ^[13][14][15]

Novels

• The Grasshopper King (Coffee House Press, 2003) ISBN 978-1566891394

Essays

• Ellenberg, Jordan (30 May 2014). "The Wrong Way to Treat Child Geniuses". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 1 June 2014. 

References

External links

• Personal website: writings & blog
• Interview: Jordan Ellenberg discusses mathematical misunderstandings and his book "How Not to Be Wrong" on the 7th Avenue Project radio show
• Jordan Ellenberg at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• "Jordan Ellenberg's results". International Mathematical Olympiad.