The Mathematical Association of America's Lester R. Ford Award



The Lester R. Ford Awards were established in 1964 to recognize authors of articles of expository excellence published in The American Mathematical Monthly or Mathematics Magazine. Beginning in 1976, a separate award (the Allendoerfer Award) was created for Mathematics Magazine. The awards are named for Lester R. Ford, Sr., a distinguished mathematician, editor of the American Mathematical Monthly, 1942-1946, and President of the Mathematical Association of America, 1947-1948. This is an award of $500. Up to five of these awards are given annually at the Summer Meeting of the Association. All awards given from 1976 on are for articles that appearded in The American Mathematical Monthly. Between 1965 and 1975, Ford awards were given for articles in the Monthly or Mathematics Magazine.

List of Recipients

2001
Keith Kendig, Is a 2000-year-old formula still keeping some secrets?, Amer. Math. Monthly 107 (2000) 402-415.
E.R. Scheinerman, When is close close enough. Amer. Math. Monthly 107 (2000) 489-499.

2000
P. J. McKenna, Large torsional oscillations in suspension bridges revisited: Fixing an old approximation, Amer. Math. Monthly 106 (1999) 1-18.
William Terrell, Some fundamental control theory I: Controllability, observability, and duality and Some fundamental control Theory II: Feedback linearization of single input nonlinear systems, Amer. Math. Monthly 106 (1999) 705-719 and 812-828.
Vilmos Totik, A tale of two integrals, Amer. Math. Monthly 106 (1999) 227-240.

1999
Yoav Benyamini, Applications of the universal surjectivity of the Cantor set, Amer. Math. Monthly 105 (1998) 832-839.
Jerry L. Kazdan, Solving equations, an elegant legacy, Amer. Math. Monthly 105 (1998) 1-21.
Bernd Sturmfels, Polynomial equations and convex polytopes, Amer. Math. Monthly 105 (1998) 907-922.

1998
S. C. Coutinho, The many avatars of a simple algebra, Amer. Math. Monthly 104 (1997), 593-604.
Judith V. Grabiner, Was Newton's calculus a dead end? The continental influence of Maclaurin's Treatise of Fluxions, Amer. Math. Monthly 104 (1997), 393-410.
Bruce Pourciau, Reading the Masters: Newton and the birth of celestial mechanics, Amer. Math. Monthly 104 (1997), 1-19.

1997
Robert G. Bartle, Return to the Riemann integral, Amer. Math. Monthly 103 (1996), 625-632.
A. F. Beardon, Sums of powers of integers, Amer. Math. Monthly 103 (1996), 201-213.
John Brillhart and Patrick Morton, A case study in mathematical research: The Golay-Rudin-Shapiro Sequence, Amer. Math. Monthly 103 (1996), 854-869.

1996
Martin Aigner, Turan's Graph Theorem, Amer. Math. Monthly 102 (1995), 808-816.
Sheldon Axler, Down with determinants!, Amer. Math. Monthly 102 (1995), 139-154.
John Oprea, Geometry and the Foucault Pendulum, Amer. Math. Monthly 102 (1995), 515-522.

1995
Fernando Q. Gouvea, A marvelous proof, Amer. Math. Monthly 101 (1994), 203-222.
Robert Gray, Georg Cantor and transcendental numbers, Amer. Math. Monthly 101 (1994), 819-832.
Jonathan L. King, Three problems in search of a measure, Amer. Math. Monthly 101 (1994), 609-628.
I. Kleiner and N. Movshovitz-Hadar, The role of paradoxes in the evolution of mathematics, Amer. Math. Monthly 102 (1994), 963-974.
William C. Waterhouse, A counterexample for Germain, Amer. Math. Monthly 101 (1994), 140-150.

1994
Bruce C. Berndt and S. Bhargava, Ramanujan--for lowbrows, Amer. Math. Monthly 100 (1993), 644-656.
Edgar R. Lorch (Reuben Hersh, editor), Szeged in 1934, Amer. Math. Monthly 100 (1993), 219-230.
Leonard Gillman, An axiomatic approach to the integral, Amer. Math. Monthly 100 (1993), 16-25.
Joseph H. Silverman, Taxicabs and sums of two cubes, Amer. Math. Monthly 100 (1993), 331-340.
Dan Velleman and Istvan Szalkai, Versatile coins, Amer. Math. Monthly 100 (1993), 26-33.

1993
Carsten Thomassen, The Jordan-Schoenflies Theorem and the classification of surfaces, amer. Math. Monthly 99 (1992), 116-130.
Don Knuth, Two notes on notation, Amer. Math. Monthly 99 (1992), 403-422.

1992
Clement W.H. Lam, The search for a finite projective plane of order 10, Amer. Math. Monthly 98 (1991), 305-318.

1991
Marcel Y. Berger, Convexity, Amer. Math. Monthly 97 (1990), 650-678.
Ronald Graham and Frances Yao, A whirlwind tour of computational geometry, Amer. Math. Monthly 97 (1990), 687-701.
Joyce Justicz, Edward R. Scheinerman, and Peter Winkler, Random intervals, Amer. Math. Monthly 97 (1990), 881-889.

1990
Jacob Goodman, Janos Pach and Chee K. Yap, Mountain climbing, ladder moving, and the ring-width of a polygon, Amer. Math. Monthly 96 (1989), 494-510.
Doron Zeilberger, Kathy O'Hara's constructive proof of the unimodality of the Gaussian polynomials, Amer. Math. Monthly 96 (1989), 590-602.

1989
Gert Almkvist and Bruce Berndt, Gauss, Landen, Ramanujan, the arithmetic-geometric mean, ellipses, pi and the Ladies Diary, Amer. Math. Monthly 95 (1988), 585-608.
Richard K. Guy, The strong law of small numbers, Amer. Math. Monthly 95 (1988), 697-712.

1988
James Epperson, On the Runge example, Amer. Math. Monthly 94 (1987), 329-341.
Stan Wagon, Fourteen proofs of a result about tiling a rectangle, Amer. Math. Monthly 94 (1987), 601-617.

1987
Stuart S. Antman, Book Review of A Convergence of Lives, Sofia Kovalevskaia: scientist, writer, revolutionary, by A. Hibner Koblitz, Amer. Math. Monthly 93 (1986), 139-144.
Joan Cleary, Sidney Morris and David Yost, Numerical geometry - numbers for shapes, Amer. Math. Monthly 93 (1986), 260-275.
Howard Hiller, Crystallography and cohomology of groups, Amer. Math. Monthly 93 (1986), 765-779.
Jacob Korevaar, Bieberbach's conjecture and its proof by Louis de Branges, Amer. Math. Monthly 93 (1986), 505-514.
Peter M. Neumann, Book Review of Galois Theory by Harold M. Edwards, Amer. Math. Monthly 93 (1986), 407-411.

1986
Jeffrey C. Lagarias, The 3x + 1 problem and its generalizations, Amer. Math. Monthly 92 (1985), 3-23.
Michael E. Taylor, Book Review of The Analysis of Linear Partial Differential Operators, Vols I & II by Lars Hörmander, Amer. Math. Monthly 92 (1985), 745-749.

1985
John D. Dixon, Factorization and primality tests, Amer. Math. Monthly 91 (1984), 333-352.
Donald G. Saari and John B. Urenko, Newton's method, circle maps, and chaotic motion, Amer. Math. Monthly 91 (1984), 3-17.

1984
Judith Grabiner, Who gave you the epsilon? Cauchy and the origins of rigorous calculus, Amer. Math. Monthly 90 (1983), 185-194.
Roger Howe, Very basic Lie theory, Amer. Math. Monthly 90 (1983), 600-623.
John Milnor, On the geometry of the Kepler problem, Amer. Math. Monthly 90 (1983), 353-365.
Joel Spencer, Large numbers and unprovable theorems, Amer. Math. Monthly 90 (1983), 365-366.
William C. Waterhouse, Do symmetric problems have symmetric solutions?, Amer. Math. Monthly 90 (1983), 378-387.

1983
Robert F. Brown, The Fixed Point Property and Cartesian Products, Amer. Math. Monthly 89 (1982), 654-678.
Tony Rothman, Genius and Biographers: The Fictionalization of Evariste Galois, Amer. Math. Monthly 89 (1982), 84-106.
Robert S. Strichartz, Radon inversion - variations on a theme, Amer. Math. Monthly 89 (1982) 377-384 and 420-423.

1982
Philip Davis, Are there coincidences in mathematics?, Amer. Math. Monthly 88 (1981), 311-320.
R. Arthur Knoebel, Exponentials reiterated, Amer. Math. Monthly 88 (1981), 235-252.

1981
R. Creighton Buck, Sherlock Holmes in Babylon, Amer. Math. Monthly 87 (1980), 335-345.
Bruce H. Pourciau, Modern multiplier rules, Amer. Math. Monthly 87 (1980), 433-452.
Alan H. Schoenfeld, Teaching problem-solving skills, Amer. Math. Monthly 87 (1980), 794-805.
Edward R. Swart, The philosophical implications of the four-color problem, Amer. Math. Monthly 87 (1980), 697-707.
Lawrence A. Zalcman, Offbeat integral geometry, Amer. Math. Monthly 87 (1980), 161-175.

1980
Desmond Fearnley-Sander, Hermann Grassmann and the creation of linear algebra, Amer. Math. Monthly 86 (1979), 809-817.
David Gale, The game of Hex and the Brouwer fixed-point theorem, Amer. Math. Monthly 86 (1979), 818-827.
Karel Hrbacek, Nonstandard set theory, Amer. Math. Monthly 86 (1979), 659-677.
Cathleen S. Morawetz, Nonlinear conservation equations, Amer. Math. Monthly 86 (1979), 284-287.
Robert Osserman, Bonnesen-style isoperimetric inequalities, Amer. Math. Monthly 86 (1979), 1-29.

1979
Bradley Efron, Controversies in the foundations of statistics, Amer. Math. Monthly 85 (1978), 231-246.
Ned Glick, Breaking records and breaking boards, Amer. Math. Monthly 85 (1978), 2-26.
Kenneth I. Gross, On the evolution of noncommutative harmonic analysis, Amer. Math. Monthly 85 (1978), 525-548.
Joseph B. Kruskal and Lawrence A. Shepp, Computerized tomography: the new medical x-ray technology, Amer. Math. Monthly 85 (1978), 420-439.

1978
Ralph P. Boas, Partial sums of infinite series, and how they grow, Amer. Math. Monthly 84 (1977), 237-258.
Louis H. Kauffman and Thomas F. Banchoff, Immersions and Mod-2 quadratic forms, Amer. Math. Monthly 84 (1977), 168-185.
Neil J.A. Sloane, Error correcting codes and invariant theory: new applications of a 19th century technique, Amer. Math. Monthly 84 (1977), 82-107.

1977
Shreeram Abhyankar, Historical ramblings in algebraic geometry and related algebra, Amer. Math. Monthly 83 (1976), 409-448.
Joseph B. Keller, Inverse problems, Amer. Math. Monthly 83 (1976), 107-118.
Donald S. Passman, What is a group ring?, Amer. Math. Monthly 83 (1976), 173-185.
Douglas Wiens, Hideo Wada, Daihachiro Sato and James P. Jones, Diophantine representation of the set of prime numbers, Amer. Math. Monthly 83 (1976), 449-464
William P. Ziemer, William H. Wheeler, S.H. Moolgavkar, Paul R. Halmos, John H. Ewing and William H. Gustafson, American mathematics from 1940 to the day before yesterday, Amer. Math. Monthly 83 (1976), 503-516.

1976
Michel L. Balinski and H.P. Young, The quota method of apportionment, Amer. Math. Monthly 82 (1975), 701-730.
Edward A. Bender and J.R. Goldman, On the applications of Möbius inversion in combinatorial analysis, Amer. Math. Monthly 82 (1975), 789-803.
Branko Grünbaum, Venn diagrams and independent families of sets, Amer. Math. Monthly 82 (1975), 12-23.
James E. Humphreys, Representations of SL (2,p), Amer. Math. Monthly 82 (1975), 21-39.
Joseph B. Keller and David W. McLaughlin, The Feynman integral, Amer. Math. Monthly 82 (1975), 451-465.
Justin J. Price, Topics in orthogonal functions, Amer. Math. Monthly 82 (1975), 594-609.

1975
Raymond Ayoub, Euler and the zeta function, Amer. Math. Monthly 81 (1974), 1067-86.
J. Callahan, Singularities and plane maps, Amer. Math. Monthly 81 (1974), 211-240.
Donald E. Knuth, Computer science and its relation to mathematics, Amer. Math. Monthly 81 (1974), 323-343.
Johannes C.C. Nitsche, Plateau's problems and their modern ramifications, Amer. Math. Monthly 81 (1974), 945-968.
Sherman K. Stein, Algebraic tiling, Amer. Math. Monthly 81 (1974), 445-462.
Lawrence Zalcman, Real proofs of complex theorems (and vice versa), Amer. Math. Monthly 81 (1974), 115-137.

1974
Patrick Billingsley, Prime numbers and Brownian motion, Amer. Math. Monthly 80 (1973), 1099-1115.
Garrett Birkhoff, Current trends in algebra, Amer. Math. Monthly 80 (1973), 760-782.
Martin D. Davis, Hilbert's tenth problem is unsolvable, Amer. Math. Monthly 80 (1973), 233-269.
I.J. Schoenberg, The elementary cases of Landau's problem of inequalities between derivatives, Amer. Math. Monthly 80 (1973), 121-158.
Lynn A. Steen, Highlights in the history of spectral theory, Amer. Math. Monthly 80 (1973), 359-381.
R.J. Wilson, An introduction to matroid theory, Amer. Math. Monthly 80 (1973), 500-525.

1973
Jean A. Dieudonné, The historical development of algebraic geometry, Amer. Math. Monthly 79 (1972), 827-866.
Samuel Karlin, Some mathematical models of population genetics, Amer. Math. Monthly 79 (1972), 699-739.
Peter D. Lax, The formation and decay of shock waves, Amer. Math. Monthly 79 (1972), 227-241.
Thomas L. Saaty, Thirteen colorful variations on Guthrie's four-color conjecture, Amer. Math. Monthly 79 (1972) 2-43.
Lynn A. Steen, Conjectures and counterexamples in metrization theory, Amer. Math. Monthly 79 (1972), 113-132.
R.L. Wilder, History in the mathematics curriculum: Its status, equality, and function, Amer. Math. Monthly 79 (1972), 479-495.

1972
Gulbank D. Chakerian and Lester H. Lange, Geometric extremum problems, Math. Mag. 44 (1971), 57-69.
Paul M. Cohn, Rings of fractions, Amer. Math. Monthly 78 (1971), 596-615.
Frederick Cunningham, Jr., The Kakeya problem for simply connected and for star-shaped Sets, Amer. Math. Monthly 78 (1971), 114-129.
W.J. Ellison, Waring's problem, Amer. Math. Monthly 78 (1971) 10-36.
Leon Henkin, Mathematical foundations for mathematics, Amer. Math. Monthly 78 (1971), 463-487.
Victor Klee, What is a convex set?, Amer. Math. Monthly 78 (1971), 616-631.

1971
Jean A. Dieudonné, The work of Nicholas Bourbaki, Amer. Math. Monthly 77 (1970), 134-145.
George Forsythe, Pitfalls in computation, or why a math book isn't enough, Amer. Math. Monthly 77 (1970), 931-956.
Paul R. Halmos, Finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, Amer. Math. Monthly 77 (1970), 457-464.
Eric Langford, A problem in geometric probability, Math. Mag. 43 (1970), 237-244.
Peter V. O'Neil, Ulam's conjecture and graph reconstructions, Amer. Math. Monthly 77 (1970), 35-43.
Olga Taussky, Sums of squares, Amer. Math. Monthly 77 (1970), 805-830.

1970
Henry L. Alder, Partition identities - from Euler to the present, Amer. Math. Monthly 76 (1969), 733-746.
Ralph P. Boas, Inequalities for the derivatives of polynomials, Math. Mag. 42 (1969), 165-174.
William A. Coppel, J.B. Fourier - on the occasion of his two hundredth birthday, Amer. Math. Monthly 76 (1969), 468-483.
Norman Levinson, A motivated account of an elementary proof of the prime number theorem, Amer. Math. Monthly 76 (1969), 225-245.
John Milnor, A problem in cartography, Amer. Math. Monthly 76 (1969), 1101-1112.
Ivan Niven, Formal power series, Amer. Math. Monthly 76 (1969), 871-889.

1969
Harley Flanders, A proof of Minkowski's inequality for convex curves, Amer. Math. Monthly 75 (1968), 581-593.
George Forsythe, What to do till the computer scientist comes, Amer. Math. Monthly 75 (1968), 454-462.
Marcel F. Neuts, Are many 1-1 functions on the positive integers onto?, Math. Mag. 41 (1968), 103-109.
Pierre Samuel, Unique Factorization, Amer. Math. Monthly 75 (1968), 945-952.
Hassler Whitney, The mathematics of physical quantities, Amer. Math. Monthly 75 (1968), 115-138, 227-256.
Albert Wilansky, Spectral decomposition of matrices for high school students, Math. Mag. 41 (1968), 51-59.

1968
Frederick Cunningham, Jr., Taking limits under the integral sign, Math. Mag. 40 (1967), 179-186.
W.F. Newns, Functional Dependence, Amer. Math. Monthly 74 (1967), 911-920.
Daniel Pedoe, On a theorem in Geometry, Amer. Math. Monthly 74 (1967), 627-640.
Keith L. Phillips, The maximal theorems of Hardy and Littlewood, Amer. Math. Monthly 74 (1967), 648-660.
F.V. Waugh and Margaret W. Maxfield, Side-and-Diagonal numbers, Math. Mag. 40 (1967), 74-83.
Hans J. Zassenhaus, On the fundamental theorem of algebra, Amer. Math. Monthly 74 (1967), 485-497.

1967
Wai-Kai Chen, Boolean matrices and switching nets, Math. Mag. 39 (1966), 1-8.
D.R. Fulkerson, Flow networks and combinatorial operations research, Amer. Math. Monthly 73 (1966), 115-138.
Mark Kac, Can one hear the shape of a drum?, Amer. Math. Monthly 73 (1966), Part II, 1-23.
M. Zuhair Nashed, Some remarks on variations and differentials, Amer. Math. Monthly 73 (1966), Part II, 63-76.
Paul B. Yale, Automorphisms of the complex numbers, Math. Mag. 39 (1966), 135-141.

1966
Carl B. Allendoerfer, Generalizations of theorems about triangles, Math. Mag. 38 (1965), 253-259.
Peter D. Lax, Numerical solutions of partial differential equations, Amer. Math. Monthly 72 (1965), Part II, 78-84.
Marvin Marcus and Henry Minc, Permanents, Amer. Math. Monthly 72 (1965), 577-591.

1965
R. H. Bing, Spheres in E3, Amer. Math. Monthly 71 (1964), 353-364.
Louis Brand, A division algebra for sequences and its associated operational calculus, Amer. Math. Monthly 71 (1964) 719-728.
Robert G. Kuller, Coin tossing, probability, and the Weierstrass approximation theorem, Math. Mag. 37 (1964), 262-267.
R. Duncan Luce, The mathematics used in mathematical psychology, Amer. Math. Monthly 71 (1964), 364-378.
Hartley Rogers, Jr., Information theory, Math. Mag. 37 (1964), 63-78.
Elmer Tolsted, An elementrary derivation of Cauchy, Holder, and Minkowski inequalities form Young's Inequality, Math. Mag. 37 (1964), 2-12.