The following was shared by the American Mathematical Society.
Jordan Ellenberg and Grant Sanderson will receive the 2023 Joint Policy Board for Mathematics (JPBM) Communications Award during a prize reception at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 4, 2023.
Ellenberg receives the 2023 JPBM Communications Award for his clear and entertaining prose that brings the power and beauty of mathematics to general audiences. In addition to authoring two best-selling books, How Not to be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking (2014) and Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else (2021), he also contributes numerous articles to newspapers and magazines in print and online. Ellenberg will deliver his JPBM Communications Award Lecture, “Outward-facing mathematics,” on January 7, 2023 at 10:05 a.m.
Sanderson receives the 2023 JPBM Communications Award for 3Blue1Brown, his watchable and engaging YouTube channel, with over 4 million subscribers, about discovery and creativity in mathematics. Topics range broadly across timely and important mathematical areas, from neural networks to information theory to unexpected appearances of pi in analysis and number theory. Through 3Blue1Brown videos and animations, he presents mathematics both as practically valuable and as an art form, rich with inviting stories and arresting images. Sanderson will deliver his JPBM Communications Award Lecture on January 5, 2023 at 3:50 p.m.
Additionally, 2022 JPBM Communications Award recipient Talithia Williams of Harvey Mudd College will deliver her lecture, “The Power of Talk: Engaging the Public in Mathematics,” on January 7, 2023 at 1 p.m.
Jordan Ellenberg
Response of Jordan Ellenberg
I feel tremendously honored to be awarded the JPBM Communications Award, especially when the list of previous recipients contains so many of the people whose writing has aided my own, among them Steve Strogatz, Siobhan Roberts, Sylvia Nasar, and of course, the light of my childhood, the late Martin Gardner. What Gardner’s writing taught me is that making math interesting to people outside the field isn’t about looking into their minds and figuring out what sort of thing interests them, but about looking inside our own minds, getting in touch with our own authentic excitement about the material, and figuring out a way to get that out of our heads and onto the page.
I’m also very grateful to my Ph.D. advisor, Barry Mazur, who besides helping me become the number theorist I wanted to be, showed me that outward-facing mathematics didn’t have to detract from a deep commitment to mathematical research; and to the editors who’ve taken the risk of putting mathematics in their own pages, such as Josh Levin at Slate, Nicholas Thompson at Wired, and most of all, Scott Moyers at Penguin Press.
Biographical Sketch of Jordan Ellenberg
Jordan Ellenberg grew up in Maryland, received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard in 1998, and is currently the John D. MacArthur Professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research centers on arithmetic geometry and especially on Diophantine problems, though his work stretches to touch algebraic geometry, topology, and extremal combinatorics. Ellenberg has held a Sloan Fellowship, an NSF-CAREER award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship; he is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society and gave a plenary lecture at the 2013 Joint Mathematical Meetings. He also has written numerous articles on mathematical topics in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Slate; a novel, The Grasshopper King (2003); and two general-audience books about mathematics, How Not to Be Wrong (2014) and Shape (2021), both of which were New York Times best-sellers. Most recently, all these achievements were eclipsed when Ellenberg became a clue on the TV game show Jeopardy!
Grant Sanderson
Response of Grant Sanderson
It's an honor to receive the JPBM Communications Award. Many of the past recipients are idols of mine, from James Gleick to Steven Strogatz and countless others. My own love for mathematics is owed, in large part, to the works produced by people in this list, and I know the same is true for many others who have fallen for the subject. I'm grateful that the JPBM recognizes the importance of their efforts in math communication, and to be in any way named in their company is genuinely surreal.
For me, math exposition is a puzzle. How do you keep material as accessible as possible, but without losing the essence of what makes it interesting to mathematicians and powerful for solving problems? Much of my own work focuses relaying visual intuitions that aid in both goals, but beyond the medium or method used to explain a topic, one thing I've learned from many of the past recipients of this award is the importance of a good story. Never underestimate the power of emotion to draw people into mathematics, whether it's the thrill of discovery, the excitement of a mathematician's life, or the urge to resolve an unexplained mystery.
Biographical Sketch of Grant Sanderson
Grant Sanderson is the creator of 3Blue1Brown, a YouTube channel which explains a wide variety of topics in math, by emphasizing visual intuition and highlighting unexpected connections, reaching more than 4.5 million subscribers. To create visuals for the channel, he wrote the open-source Python library Manim, which has been used since by hundreds more to create expository math material.
After growing up in Park City, Utah, Sanderson studied math and computer science at Stanford University, where he experimented with creating YouTube videos and Manim. After submitting some of his work to a Khan Academy talent search for online educators, he was hired by the team there for a fellowship creating multivariable calculus material. Since then, while focusing full-time on 3Blue1Brown, Sanderson has collaborated with numerous other math education and outreach outlets, including M.I.T., Quanta magazine, Numberphile, and Udacity.
About the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics Communication Award
The Joint Policy Board for Mathematics (JPBM) Communication Award was established by the JPBM in 1988 and is given annually to reward and encourage communicators who, on a sustained basis, bring mathematical ideas and information to non-mathematical audiences. The JPBM is a collaborative effort of the American Mathematical Society, American Statistical Association, Mathematical Association of America, and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
Find out more about the award and see past recipients.