The Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival (JRMF) is an educational organization that sponsors locally organized mathematics festivals and online webinars targeting K–12 students. The events are designed to introduce students to mathematics in a collaborative and non-competitive forum.Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival

Mathematical Sciences Research Institute The Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath), formerly the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), is an independent nonprofit mathematical research institution on the University of California campus in Berkeley, Califo ...

About Us
jrmf.org

History

In the 1970s,

Saint Mary's College of California Saint Mary's College of California is a Private college, private Catholic Church, Catholic college in Moraga, California. Established in 1863, it is affiliated with the Catholic Church and administered by the De La Salle Brothers. The college of ...

produced a mathematics contest that was popular with secondary schools throughout the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

.Saint Mary's College Mathematics Contest Problems For Junior and Senior High School
/ref> In 2005, Nancy Blachman attended an education forum sponsored by the

(MSRI) and remembered how the Saint Mary's contest had inspired her as a student.Saint Mary’s Math Contest: High School Division
: by Nancy Blachman & Nick Baxter Unfortunately, the contest no longer existed. Seeking to possibly resurrect the contest, Blachman and MSRI development director Jim Sotiros reached out to colleagues in the educational community. One response was from local high school math teacher Joshua Zucker, who also remembered the contest and even had saved a book of problems from it. Sotiros suggested that Blachman and her husband David desJardins fund MSRI in order to hire Zucker to recreate a program in the style of the Saint Mary’s Math Contest. Blachman and Zucker became co-founders and organized their first event in 2007. They called it a festival rather than a contest because they wanted to emphasize collaboration, creativity and fun rather than competition. They named the festival after

Julia Robinson Julia Hall Bowman Robinson (December 8, 1919July 30, 1985) was an American mathematician noted for her contributions to the fields of computability theory and computational complexity theory—most notably in decision problems. Her work on Hilbe ...

, a mathematician renowned for her contributions to decision problems. In fact, her work on Hilbert's 10th problem played a crucial role in its ultimate resolution. Blachman felt that such a woman would provide a role model for young girls and would show that one need not be male to be a great mathematician.Getting Kids Excited About Mathematics, One Festival at a Time
By

Colm Mulcahy Colm Mulcahy (born September 1958) is an Irish mathematician, academic, columnist, book author, public outreach speaker, and amateur magician. He is Professor Emeritus at Spelman College, where he was on the faculty from 1988 to 2020. In addition ...

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Blog, December 6, 2017 When they sent out invitations to local schools, the response was so overwhelming that, in order to have enough space, they prevailed upon

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

in nearby Mountain View to host the first festival.The 2007 Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival at Google was the founding of this event for middle school and high school students.
video A second festival was hosted in 2008 by

Pixar Animation Studios Pixar Animation Studios (commonly known as Pixar () and stylized as P I X A R) is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, Californi ...

Emeryville Emeryville may refer to: * Emeryville, California Emeryville is a city located in northwest Alameda County, California, in the United States. It lies in a corridor between the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, with a border on the shore of San ...

. Enthusiasm and interest have spurred strong growth, and since then, there have been festivals at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

(and its greater community);

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; and

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, and throughout the United States, as well as in Europe and Asia.The Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival in Hong Kong
March 24, 2018 As of December 2019, JRMF will have hosted nearly 500 events in 25 states, the District of Columbia, one territory (Puerto Rico), and 15 foreign countries. In 2020, they hosted over 120 Festivals—an increase of more than 50% over 2018. The services JRMF offer continue to be free of charge. The target audience is third- to eighth-graders. Our festivals are attended by 30 to 50 percent girls. The Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival has been invited to host festivals and tables at events such as the Joint Mathematics Meeting and MAA Mathfest. In December 2019, they celebrated Julia Robinson's 100th birthday with a festival in her hometown.

Programming

The Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival has hosted festivals in over 15 countries and 25 states and territories.

COVID-19 Response

In order to help families cope with COVID-19, the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival, under the leadership of Hector Rosario, launched the JRMF Webinar Series on March 26, 2020. In this weekly series, they explore an activity that they use at their festivals. In order to serve the national and international communities, they host three sessions of the same seminar every Thursday, from 7 AM to 7 PM EDT, in three languages - English, Spanish and Hebrew. Participants from the US, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East come to attend. Many community members and volunteers have joined the JRMF team as facilitators to lead breakout rooms in order to provide closer attention to each participant for learning and brainstorming.

Support

Since its founding, JRMF has had the support of many people and organizations, including dedicated mentors and volunteers, the founding host MSRI, and the

American Institute of Mathematics The American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) is one of eight mathematical institutes in the United States, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). It was founded in 1994 by John Fry, co-founder of Fry's Electronics, and originally located ...

(AIM), which has been a fiscal sponsor since 2013. JRMF has also frequently partnered with various educational, corporate, and mathematical organizations including The National Association of Math Circles, The

National Museum of Mathematics The National Museum of Mathematics or MoMath is a museum dedicated to mathematics in Manhattan, New York City. It opened on December 15, 2012. It is located at 11 26th Street (Manhattan), East 26th Street between Fifth Avenue (Manhattan), Fifth ...

ThinkFun ThinkFun, formerly known as Binary Arts, is a toy and board game company founded in 1985 by Bill Ritchie and Andrea Barthello. The two started the company from the basement of their home in Virginia, with a product base that initially consisted of ...

, and

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(G4G). Among The "Friends of JRMF" are

David Eisenbud David Eisenbud (born 8 April 1947 in New York City) is an American mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI); he previously serve ...

Gary Antonick Gary Antonick ( ; born February 11, 1963) is an American journalist and recreational mathematician who for many years wrote a puzzle-based column called "Numberplay" for the New York Times. Education and career Antonick has a BS in Engineering fro ...

Peter Norvig Peter Norvig (born December 14, 1956) is an American computer scientist and Distinguished Education Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. He previously served as a director of research and search quality at Google. Norvig is t ...

Vi Hart Victoria Hart (born 1988), commonly known as Vi Hart (), is an American mathematician and YouTuber. They describe themselves as a "recreational mathemusician" and are well-known for creating mathematical videos on YouTube. Hart founded the virt ...

, and

Megan Smith Megan J. Smith (born October 21, 1964) is an American engineer and technologist. She was the third Chief Technology Officer of the United States (U.S. CTO) and Assistant to the President, serving under President Barack Obama. She was previously a ...

.Sponsors and Partners
JRMF.org

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://jrmf.org/
About the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival
video Mathematics organizations Mathematics conferences Mathematics competitions Mathematics education in the United States Festival organizations in North America Organizations established in 2007 2007 establishments in California