John Colin Stillwell (born 1942) is an Australian
mathematician on the faculties of the
University of San Francisco and
Monash University.
Biography
He was born in
Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a metropol ...
and lived there until he went to the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his doctorate.
He received his PhD from MIT in 1970, working under
Hartley Rogers, Jr who had himself worked under
Alonzo Church. From 1970 until 2001 he taught at Monash University back in Australia and in 2002 began teaching in
San Francisco.
Honors
In 2005, Stillwell was the recipient of the
Mathematical Association of America
The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure a ...
's prestigious
Chauvenet Prize
The Chauvenet Prize is the highest award for mathematical expository writing. It consists of a prize of $1,000 and a certificate, and is awarded yearly by the Mathematical Association of America in recognition of an outstanding expository article ...
for his article “The Story of the
120-Cell
In geometry, the 120-cell is the convex regular 4-polytope (four-dimensional analogue of a Platonic solid) with Schläfli symbol . It is also called a C120, dodecaplex (short for "dodecahedral complex"), hyperdodecahedron, polydodecahedron, heca ...
,” Notices of the AMS, January 2001, pp. 17–24. In 2012 he became a fellow of the
American Mathematical Society.
Works
Books
Stillwell is the author of many textbooks and other books on mathematics including:
*''Classical Topology and Combinatorial Group Theory'', 1980,
*''Mathematics and Its History'', 1989, 3rd edition 2010,
*''Geometry of Surfaces'', 1992,
*''Elements of Algebra: Geometry, Numbers, Equations'', 1994,
*''Numbers and Geometry'', 1998,
*''Elements of Number Theory'', 2003,
*''The Four Pillars of Geometry'', 2005,
*''Yearning for the Impossible: The Surprising Truths of Mathematics'', 2006,
*''Naive Lie Theory'', 2008,
*''Roads to Infinity'', 2010,
*''The Real Numbers: An Introduction to Set Theory and Analysis'', 2013,
*''Elements of Mathematics: From Euclid to Gödel'', 2016,
*''
Reverse Mathematics: Proofs from the Inside Out'', 2018,
*''A Concise History of Mathematics for Philosophers'', 2019,
*''The Story of Proof: Logic and the History of Mathematics'', 2022,
Selected articles
*
*
*
*
*
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stillwell, John
1942 births
Living people
Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni
Monash University faculty
University of San Francisco faculty
Australian mathematicians
Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
Australian textbook writers
People from Melbourne
Group theorists
Topologists
University of Melbourne alumni