Monthly Archives: April 2020

Congratulations to Student Award Recipients for Spring 2020

The Susan Prazak Award for Future Teachers is given annually in honor of Sue Prazak, who taught at CofC from 1972 to 1999.  This year’s recipient is Andrew Skvarna.

The Ewa Wojcicka Award is our departments top award, given in memory of Professor Wojcicka to a recipient showing exceptional ability, creativity and potential in mathematics.  This year’s recipient of the Wojcicka award is Jay van Raalte.

The Scott Ward Award, given each year to a math major displaying outstanding ability in math and a commitment to connect mathematics to another discipline, goes this year to Michael Lanier.

Outstanding Student Awards went to Katrina Bynum, Terence Carey, Maddos Johnston, Chloe Mattila, Jay Van Raalte,  Blaine Billings, Posy Olivetti, Michael Lanier,  and Shoshana Berkowitz.

Unfortunately, because of the campus closure, there will be no award ceremony or party this year.  But, we are as proud of this award recipients as we ever are and send them our heartiest congratulations!

Keep Up with the Latest Math News and Research

Like most other scheduled events this spring, the College of Charleston’s math colloquium has cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.  But, if you are missing that weekly dose of interesting cutting-edge math, there are still ways you can get something similar.

Check out Talk Math With Your Friends, a Zoom-based math seminar series very similar to our own colloquium.

Quanta Magazine is a good source for well-researched articles about recent developments in the mathematic sciences.

And, if you’re more advanced, you can also check out the latest preprints posted on the arXiv, a repository of actual research papers.

Princeton Mathematician John Conway Dies of COVID-19

The prolific mathematician John Conway may not be the first but is certainly the most famous mathematician to die from complications related to the current pandemic.  (See this announcement from Princeton University.)

One of the most amazing things that Conway discovered in his long career was a very simple set of rules that reproduce surprisingly life-like behavior.  Click here to read about and here to play his “Game of Life”.