Keith Devlin

Keith J. Devlin
Keith Devlin (2011)
Born	East Hull, England
Nationality	English and American
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Stanford University, Kings College London, University of Bristol, University of Manchester, University of Aberdeen, University of Oslo, University of Heidelberg, University of Bonn, University of Toronto, University of Lancaster, Colby College, St. Mary's College of California
Alma mater	Kings College London, University of Bristol
Doctoral advisor	Frederick Rowbottom

Keith J. Devlin (16 March 1947-) is a British mathematician and popular science writer. He was born in Hull and attended Marfleet and Newton Hall part of Greatfield High School.[1] Since 1987 he has lived in the United States. He has dual American-British citizenship.

Biography

Devlin earned a B.Sc. (Special) in Mathematics at Kings College London and a Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Bristol under the supervision of Frederick Rowbottom. He is co-founder and Executive Director of Stanford University's Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute (H-STAR), a co-founder of Stanford Media X university-industry research partnership program, and a Senior Researcher in the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI). He is a commentator on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Saturday, where he is known as "The Math Guy."

As of 2011, he is the author of 31 books and over 80 research articles. Several of his books are aimed at an audience of the general public, as opposed to much academic work.

His recent research work has focused on the development of new tools and protocols to assist intelligence analysis and the development and use of videogames in mathematics education.

Devlin is also creator of the concept "soft mathematics," introduced in the final chapter of his book Goodbye, Descartes.

Research publications

• Devlin, Keith I.; Jensen, R. Björn (1975), "Marginalia to a theorem of Silver", ISILC Logic Conference (Proc. Internat. Summer Inst. and Logic Colloq., Kiel, 1974), Lecture notes in mathematics 499, Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag, pp. 115–142, doi:10.1007/BFb0079419, ISBN 978-3-540-07534-9, MR 0480036  [First proof of Jensen's covering theorem; Keith J. Devlin is credited as Keith I. Devlin in the paper.]

List of books

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

• Introduction to Mathematical Thinking. Keith Devlin (July 18, 2012). 2012. ISBN 978-0615653631. 
• Mathematics Education for a New Era: Video Games as a Medium for Learning. A K Peters. 2011. ISBN 978-1-56881-431-5. 
• The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat, and the Seventeenth-Century Letter that Made the World Modern. Basic Books. 2008. ISBN 978-0-465-00910-7. 
• The Numbers Behind NUMB3RS: Solving Crime with Mathematics. Plume. 2007. ISBN 0-452-28857-6.  with coauthor Gary Lorden
• The Math Instinct: Why You're a Mathematical Genius (Along with Lobsters, Birds, Cats, and Dogs). Thunder's Mouth Press. 2006. ISBN 1-56025-839-X. 
• The Millennium Problems: the Seven Greatest Unsolved Mathematical Puzzles of Our Time. Basic Books. 2002. ISBN 0-465-01730-4. 
• The Math Gene: How Mathematical Thinking Evolved and Why Numbers Are Like Gossip. Basic Books. 2000. ISBN 0-465-01619-7. 
• Mathematics: The New Golden Age. Columbia University Press. 1999. ISBN 0-231-11639-X. 
• The Language of Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible. Holt Paperbacks. 1998. ISBN 0-8050-7254-3. 
• Mathematics: The Science of Patterns. Holt Paperbacks. 1996. ISBN 0-8050-7344-2. 
• The Joy of Sets: Fundamentals of Contemporary Set Theory. Springer. 1993. ISBN 0-387-94094-4. 
• Logic and Information. Cambridge University Press. 1991. ISBN 0-521-49971-2. 
• Constructibility. Springer. 1984. ISBN 3-540-13258-9. 
• The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution. Walker Publishing Co. 2011. ISBN 978-0-8027-7812-3. 

Awards

• Joint Policy Board for Mathematics Communications Award
• In 2007 he received Wonderfest's Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization.
• 2004 International Pythagoras Prize in Mathematics, in the category Best Expository Text in the Mathematical Sciences for the Italian translation of The Millennium Problems
• Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, 2012

External links

• Official website including his curriculum vitae
• Devlin's Angle — column at the Mathematical Association of America
• Keith Devlin at the Mathematics Genealogy Project