Jordan Stuart Ellenberg (born October 30, 1971) is an American mathematician who is a professor of mathematics at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...

. His research involves

arithmetic geometry In mathematics, arithmetic geometry is roughly the application of techniques from algebraic geometry to problems in number theory. Arithmetic geometry is centered around Diophantine geometry, the study of rational points of algebraic variety, alg ...

. He is also an author of both fiction and non-fiction writing.

Early life

Ellenberg was born in

Potomac, Maryland Potomac () is a census-designated place (CDP) in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, named after the nearby Potomac River. Potomac is the seventh most educated small town in America, based on percentage of residents with postsecondary deg ...

. He was a

child prodigy A child prodigy is defined in psychology research literature as a person under the age of ten who produces meaningful output in some domain at the level of an adult expert. The term is also applied more broadly to young people who are extraor ...

who taught himself to read at the age of two by watching ''

Sesame Street ''Sesame Street'' is an American educational children's television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop (known as the Children's Television Workshop until June 2000) a ...

''. His mother discovered his ability one day while she was driving on the

Capital Beltway The Capital Beltway is a Interstate Highway in the Washington metropolitan area that surrounds Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, and its inner suburbs in adjacent Maryland and Virginia. It is the basis of the phrase " inside ...

when her toddler informed her: "The sign says ' Bethesda is to the right.'" In second grade, he helped his teenage babysitter with her math homework. By fourth grade, he was participating in high school competitions (such as the American Regions Mathematics League) as a member of the Montgomery County math team. And by eighth grade, he had started college-level work. He was part of the

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth The Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) is a prospective longitudinal survey study of persons (mostly in the United States) identified by scores of 700 or higher on a section of the SAT Reasoning Test before age 13 years. It is one of th ...

longitudinal cohort. He scored a perfect 800 on the math portion and a 680 on the verbal portion of the

SAT-I The SAT ( ) is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. Since its debut in 1926, its name and scoring have changed several times; originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, it was later called the Schol ...

exam at the age of 12. When he was in eighth grade, he took honors calculus classes at the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

; when he was a junior at Winston Churchill High School, he earned a perfect score of 1600 on the SAT; and as a high school senior, he placed second in the national

Westinghouse Science Talent Search Westinghouse may refer to: Businesses Current companies *Westinghouse Electric Corporation, the company that manages the Westinghouse brand, with licensees: **Westinghouse Electric Company, providing nuclear power-related services **Westinghou ...

. He participated in the

International Mathematical Olympiad The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is a mathematical olympiad for pre-university students, and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. It has since been held annually, except i ...

s three times, winning gold medals in 1987 and 1989 (with perfect scores) and a silver medal in 1988. He was also a two-time

Putnam fellow The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, often abbreviated to Putnam Competition, is an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate college students enrolled at institutions of higher learning in the United States and Canada (regar ...

(1990 and 1992) while at Harvard.

Career

In 2004, he began teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is currently the John D. MacArthur Professor of Mathematics, a position he has held since 2015. In 2012 he became a fellow of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

and was a plenary speaker at the 2013

Joint Mathematics Meetings The Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM) is a mathematics conference hosted annually in early January by the American Mathematical Society (AMS). Frequently, several other national mathematics organizations also participate. The meeting is the largest ...

where he spoke on the subject of number theory and algebraic topology, the study of abstract high-dimensional shapes and the relations between them. He was named a

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 2015. He was elected as one of the six A.D. White Professors-at-Large at Cornell in 2019 His research focuses on "the fields of number theory and algebraic geometry." In addition to his research articles, he has authored a novel, ''The Grasshopper King'', which was a finalist for the 2004

Young Lions Fiction Award The Young Lions Fiction Award is an annual US literary prize of $10,000, awarded to a writer who is 35 years old or younger for a novel or collection of short stories. The award was established in 2001 by Ethan Hawke, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Rick ...

; the "Do the Math" column in

Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

; two non-fiction books, ''

How Not to Be Wrong ''How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking'', written by Jordan Ellenberg, is a ''New York Times Best Selling'' book that connects various economic and societal philosophies with basic mathematics and statistical principles. Sum ...

''; and ''Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else'' (2022), as well as articles on mathematical topics in many newspapers and general magazines. Ellenberg was a mathematics consultant for the 2017 film ''

Gifted Intellectual giftedness is an intellectual ability significantly higher than average. It is a characteristic of children, variously defined, that motivates differences in school programming. It is thought to persist as a trait into adult life, wi ...

'', which features a math prodigy as its protagonist; he also made a cameo appearance in the film as a professor lecturing on the partition function and

Ramanujan's congruences In mathematics, Ramanujan's congruences are some remarkable congruences for the partition function ''p''(''n''). The mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan discovered the congruences : \begin p(5k+4) & \equiv 0 \pmod 5, \\ p(7k+5) & \equiv 0 \pmod 7, ...

. This gives him a Erdős-Bacon number of 5.

Personal life

Ellenberg lives in

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...

, with his wife and children. He maintains a blog called Quomodocumque which means "after whatever fashion" in Latin.

Works

Nonfiction

* '' How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking'' (Penguin, 2014) * ''Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else''
Description
an
Kirkus book review
(Penguin, 2021)

Novels

* ''The Grasshopper King'' (Coffee House Press, 2003)

Essays

* * * * * Ellenberg's essay is adapted from his 2021 book, ''Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else'', Penguin.

Filmography

References

External links

Personal website: writings & blog

Interview: Jordan Ellenberg discusses mathematical misunderstandings and his book "How Not to Be Wrong" on the 7th Avenue Project radio show
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ellenberg, Jordan 1971 births 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American writers Arithmetic geometers Number theorists Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Harvard University alumni International Mathematical Olympiad participants Living people Mathematics popularizers University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty Writers from Wisconsin Putnam Fellows